This lack of activity is partly because a couple of new projects at work that keep me busy, and also because I’m helping my wife start her own niche site, in the parenting and babies niche.

What we are doing now is going through several design ideas and sketches of logos and headers we got prepared. Once we will reach an agreement on the layout, available categories, color theme, I will try to use WordPress to design a static niche site.

My wife, a smart woman, was thinking ahead and already has a bunch of articles ready. This is a great thing as I can use the wait period for the graphic design to upload her articles into WordPress and the thing that will be left for us to do is to dress it in the newly designed theme.

Well, that is why I’m barely finding time to write. I try to visit my regular blogs and leave comments, do my share on forums, just to keep the juices flowing. I know I also have to write, but on the other hand, I don’t want to post crap either.

To compensate, I briefed my programmer at work to design some sort of a useful online tool that I could use here to provide added value to my readers, and I’m anxiously waiting for him to finish. Ooooh, so exciting…

- Alex

Technorati Tags: ghost blog, projects, niche site, wordpress, online tool

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A Brief Update on What’s Going On in The Kingdom

You must have been there at least once. Installing a new plugin or trying a new cool tweak on your theme, and when you save and anxiously go to view your site you find out that it’s become unreadable in some way.

It may take five minutes or it can take an hour to return your blog to its previous state, either way, if you have an established blog that’s getting traffic, quite a few readers will going to raise an eyebrow at your slip. If there were a newcomer at this time, he would probably just browse through without missing a beat.

The importance of locally testing your creativity

Locally testing your tweaks, plugins and new design ideas could save you from all that. It is quite simple to do but can be intimidating for the beginner.

It is simple, just follow me…

1. Install a web-server on your computer

• Download and install a web-server on your computer. A web-server will enable you to run web-sites hosted on your machine instead of the hosting provider.

• I’m using the free and user friendly WampServer that you can download here:
  http://www.wampserver.com/en/download.php

• Follow through the installation wizard without any customizations, which is enough for our purpose, and you should not run into any problems.

• Choose to run WampServer on completion of the installation.

2. Create a DataBase

• Left click on the WampServer tray icon

• Click on phpMyAdmin

• In the ‘Create new database’ field insert the name for your database (e.g.: myblog)

• Click Create

• Close the browser window without creating any tables

3. Open the WordPress package

• Download the latest WordPress package from here: http://wordpress.org/download/

• Open the contents of the wordpress folder in the archive to a directory of your choice (e.g.: myblog.com) that you will create in the \www directory of the WampServer installation. (c:\wamp\www\myblog.com)

4. Create the wp-config.php file

• inside your myblog.com directory there is a wp-config-sample.php

• rename it to wp-config.php

• open it in your text editor

• change the putyourdbnamehere in DB_NAME to your database name (myblog)

• change the usernamehere in DB_USER to your username (root)

• change the yourpasswordhere DB_PASSWORD to nothing (”)

• leave everything else as it is

• Save

5. Installing WordPress

• Open your web browser and go to: http://localhost/myblog.com/wp-admin/install.php

• Enter whatever you want in the blog title and e-mail

• Click Istall WordPress

• After the installation has competed note the username and password to login in to WordPress

If you try to go to http://localhost/myblog.com you’d hit your local version of your “naked” blog. But, continue to the next step to dress it in your theme and plugins.

6. Copy the themes and plugins

• Use your FTP client to copy the wp-content/plugins to your local location (c:\wamp\www\myblog.com\wp-content\plugins)

• Copy your theme from the /wp-content/themes/ to the the local \wp-content\themes the same way.

7. Activate the theme and plugins

• Go to http://localhost/myblog.com/wp-admin

• Enter your username and password and you’ll find yourself in the familiar backend of WordPress. Ahhh…

• Activate your plugins

• Switch to your theme

That’s it.

Now you have your local blog operational. The perfect testing grounds. Test your genius locally first, and then, when everything works, go live!

• To access your blog just go to http://localhost/myblog.com
• To access your admin panel, go to http://localhost/myblog.com/wp-admin

- Alex

Technorati Tags: tweaking, local machine, wamp, wordpress, theme

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
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Safely Tweaking Your WordPress Blog

What I like about this project is that I found myself being committed to it. I have already invested my money in this, and I’m not going to quit until I see results. 
I don’t know anything about html and I was pretty clueless about what to do next. My blog hopping showed many bloggers were using WordPress. Visiting WordPress’ website revealed that it is a publishing platform that you can install on your hosting and start publishing with the same ease as a hosted blog platform (e.g. Blogger.com), but with much greater flexibility of features and design. I discovered a huge community of people developing plugins and themes, and this is the support I thought I am going to need. Great!

Part of my strategy is to see what others do well and do the same, so, WordPress was going to be my platform.

When looking for a hosting provider, see if they have Fantastico among their features. I know that many do, and HostMonster is no exception. Fantastico is an auto-installer that can install many applications for you on the server. WordPress is one of the applications on the list and it takes under a minute to install.

At the time I didn’t know about this and was installing WordPress manually. This is not very difficult, but you have to create a database on your hosting, use an FTP client to upload the files, modify a .php file (I was really freaked out at this point), run the installation script and hope for the best. Each step took me about 10 minutes to figure out, so I was beating myself on the head with a frying pan when I found out (and tried) Fantastico.

Anyway, after 40 minutes of messing about with databases and php files (who would have thought) I was the proud owner of my own self-hosted blog.

Now I was out there.
Despite having only the default WordPress theme and the “Hello World!” example post, it felt good. It was like walking into a house you just bought, when it is a mess and smells really bad, but you feel on top of the world, because you know you this is now yours.
It felt really good.

- Alex

Technorati Tags: domain name, hostmonster, blog, making money, project, wordpress, strategy, fantastico, house

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
Current post was originally posted on:

Money Online, The First Steps – Establishing Net Presence (3)

Despite not having prior knowledge and experience, I was able to come to several personal preferences:

• I would need a Unix/Linux server. Just because these hosting plans are much cheaper, and I am not planning on doing any .net, c# programming or having a MsSql database to justify the additional expense of having a Windows server.

• I would rather have a hosting provider that allows to host unlimited domains. This will secure my future development and I will not need to purchase additional hosting plans for my other domains.

• I would need a provider that allows numerous databases and email accounts, to support my numerous domains.

• Customer Service is something that comes up as an important issue, but they all claiming to be 24/7, so until I try I won’t know.

A whole lot of technical information also comes up, but I don’t have a clue anyway. The only thing I knew for sure is that I would use Wordpress for my blogs, and, in the future, Joomla! for my sites, so I checked whether the final few choices have the necessary requirements.

One important thing to keep in mind. You will have to prepay your hosting for a year, or if available more to get the best price. The more you prepay the cheaper your plan will be.

Tell you the truth, I was a little startled by this, but after a minute I came to my senses: I am an entrepreneur! I don’t plan to quit after a month, so, why pay more in order to have an escape hatch after a month? And besides, most have money back guarantees. That way, you have a month, or sometimes more, to check if everything is as promised.

My final choices were:

Bluehost – $6.95/month

• First impression: presentable, business oriented design.

• Unlimited domains

• 600Gb of space

• 6,000Gb or transfer

• 2,500 email accounts

• Includes a free domain name, with free privacy option (doesn’t show your personal details on WHOIS searches)

• 30-day money back guarantee

Hostgator – $7.95/month

• First impression: nice, friendly design

• Unlimited domains

• 600Gb of space

• 6,000Gb or transfer

• Unlimited email accounts

• 45-day money back guarantee

HostMonster- $6.95/month

• First impression: friendly, but serious design

• Unlimited domains

• 600Gb of space

• 6,000Gb or transfer

• Unlimited email accounts

• Includes a free domain name, with free privacy option (doesn’t show your personal details on WHOIS searches)

• 30-day money back guarantee

Finally, after a follow-up research I went with HostMonster. Hostmonster offers a package that answers my requirements, can install Wordpress for you in a click of a mouse, it offeres a good price and a friendly (inter)face.

Give them a visit to view their full technical features.

- Alex

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
Current post was originally posted on:

Money Online, The First Steps – Establishing Net Presence (2)