WordPress for Business Bloggers: Promote and grow your WordPress blog with advanced plug-ins, analytics, advertising, and SEO

356 Pages·2008·8.39 MB·English

by  Paul Thewlis

This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Holleman Kaprica on 8th December 2008
100 E Wilson, , Valliant, , 74764
WordPress for Bussiness
Bloggers
Promote and grow your WordPress blog with advanced
plugins, analytics, advertising, and SEO
Paul Thewlis

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Holleman Kaprica on 8th December 2008
100 E Wilson, , Valliant, , 74764
WordPress for Bussiness Bloggers
Copyright © 2008 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written
permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in
critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of
the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold
without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, Packt Publishing,
nor its dealers or distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to
be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all the
companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals.
However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: August 2008
Production Reference: 1300708
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
32 Lincoln Road
Olton
Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 978-1-847195-32-6
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Karl Moore ([email protected])
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Holleman Kaprica on 8th December 2008
100 E Wilson, , Valliant, , 74764
Credits
Author Project Manager
Paul Thewlis Abhijeet Deobhakta
Reviewers Project Coordinator
Lee Jordan Rajashree Hamine
Narayan Bhat
Indexer
Senior Acquisition Editor Monica Ajmera
David Barnes
Proofreader
Development Editor Chris Smith
Ved Prakash Jha
Production Coordinator
Technical Editor Shantanu Zagade
Dhiraj Chandiramani
Cover Work
Editorial Team Leader Shantanu Zagade
Akshara Aware
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Holleman Kaprica on 8th December 2008
100 E Wilson, , Valliant, , 74764
About the Author
Paul Thewlis has worked as a web communications professional in the public and
private sectors. He is currently E-Communications Manager for a multi-national
transport company, headquartered in the UK. He began his web career as a Technical
Editor, working on web design books for a well-known publisher. He has extensive
experience of many content management systems and blogging platforms. He is
an expert in the use of social media within corporate communications, and blogs
about that subject, as well as WordPress and the Web in general, at http://blog.
paulthewlis.com. Paul lives in Birmingham, England, with his fiancée, Zöe.
I would like to thank Matt Mullenweg and the WordPress
development team, as well as all the hard-working members of the
wider WordPress community, who created the plugins featured in
this book. Scott Wallick and Andy Skelton deserve a special mention
for the great work they do on the Sandbox theme. I would also like
to thank my parents, Jack and Margaret, for their unending support,
and my wonderful fiancée, Zöe, for putting up with so many late
nights and lonely weekends during the writing of this book.
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Holleman Kaprica on 8th December 2008
100 E Wilson, , Valliant, , 74764
About the Reviewers
Lee Jordan is an avid user of Blogger, Twitter, and other useful web applications.
She designs interactive customer service portals, enterprise-level websites and other
web-based applications and writes web content and user guides. She applies over ten
years of experience designing and writing for the Web to developing interactive,
user-friendly websites, and writing technical guides to popular web technologies.
Narayan Bhat is passionate about wandering the Internet and blogging.
Get Blogger tips from his blogging websites:
Dummies Guide to Google Blogger (Beta)—http://betabloggerfordummies.
blogspot.com/2007/08/hot-tips-on-blogger-profiles.html
SEO Adsense Tips—http://seoblogadsense.blogspot.com/
THE WIDGETS OF BETA BLOGGER—http://widgetry.blogspot.com
Tips for Bloggers—http://tipsforbloggers.blogspot.com
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Holleman Kaprica on 8th December 2008
100 E Wilson, , Valliant, , 74764
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Holleman Kaprica on 8th December 2008
100 E Wilson, , Valliant, , 74764
Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: A Blog Less Ordinary—What Makes a Great Blog? 7
You Can Stand Out from the Crowd 7
Where Do You Fit In? 9
Not All Business Blogs Are the Same 10
Increasing Sales 11
Adding Value 12
A Dialog with Your Customers 12
Raising Awareness 13
Showing Expertise 14
Customer Service 15
Public Relations 16
Driving Traffic 17
Add Some Personality 18
Categorizing Business Blogs 19
Product Blogs 19
Corporate or Company Blogs 20
News Blogs 21
Expert Blogs 22
The WordPress Arsenal 23
Good Design 24
Maximizing Usability 24
Promoting Your Blog 24
Analyzing the Statistics 25
Managing Content 25
Monetizing Your Blog 25
Measuring Success 25
Google PageRank 25
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Holleman Kaprica on 8th December 2008
100 E Wilson, , Valliant, , 74764
Table of Contents
Alexa Ranking 26
Summary 27
Chapter 2: Introducing Our Case Study—ChilliGuru 29
ChilliGuru—The Man Behind the Blog 29
Before and After 30
Goals and Planning 31
Business Situation 32
Strategic Goals 32
The Blog Plan 33
Tactical Goals 36
Implementation 36
An Overview of the ChilliGuru Makeover 36
Design 37
Content 37
Promotion and Analysis 38
Generating Revenue 40
Enabling Growth 40
Summary 41
Chapter 3: Designing Your Blog 43
Blog Design Principles 43
Layout 44
Color 48
Web Color Theory 50
Typography 51
Usability and Accessibility 52
Implementing Your Blog Design 53
A Brief Introduction to CSS 54
The Early Days of the Web 54
Content and Style 55
Looking at the Code 56
The Style Sheet 59
Applying the Style Sheet 61
Tweaking the Styles 66
Setting Up a Local Development Environment 68
Installing XAMPP 69
Setting the 'root' Password for MySQL 72
Installing WordPress Locally 75
Case Study—ChilliGuru Design 78
The Style Sheet Header 80
The Page Layout 82
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This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Holleman Kaprica on 8th December 2008
100 E Wilson, , Valliant, , 74764
Table of Contents
Colors and Fonts 85
The Header 86
The Menu 87
The Main Content Area 88
The Sidebars 90
The Footer 91
Summary 93
Chapter 4: Images and Videos 95
Image Theory Basics 95
Dimensions 95
Resolution 96
File Size 96
Optimization 96
Installing 'The GIMP' 97
Images in WordPress Posts 97
Thumbnail Creation 97
Thumbnail Size 102
Attachment Size 104
Styling Images 106
Setting Up an Image Gallery 107
NextGEN Gallery 107
Creating an Image Gallery Page 114
Using Video 117
EasyTube 117
Adding a Favicon 118
Summary 120
Chapter 5: Content Is King 121
Blog Writing Tips 121
Killer Headlines 122
Length of Posts 122
Post Frequency 123
Links to Other Blogs 124
Establishing Your Tone and Voice 124
The Structure of a Post 125
End with a Question 126
A Quick Check List 126
Categories and Tags 127
The Difference between Categories and Tags 127
Using Categories 127
Using Tags 128
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