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HTML, by itself, is actually a very easy language to learn. When you combine it with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and other web languages, then it becomes a little too much for non-web designers to absorb.

HTML is nothing more than instructions for the browser in the form of tags. Tags (not to be confused with WordPress Tags) are letter codes surrounded by brackets like this: . Your text and images need to be surrounded by these tags so the browser knows where to place the content and how to display it. Otherwise, the browser will do what it wants to. And it won’t be pretty.

Most tags come in pairs – an opening tag: and a closing tag: . You’ll notice the only difference is the “/” in the closing tag. This tells the browser that it has reached the end of this particular instruction. The browser will then continue to look for the next instruction.

Here is a list of the most common HTML tags you will encounter using WordPress:

The Paragraph tag goes at the beginning and end of a paragraph of text.

The Anchor tag is used to create text and image links. The “href” attribute is where the URL goes.

Both the Strong tag and Bold tag designate what text to bold. WordPress uses when you click the Bold button, but if you use the  tag when typing in HTML mode WordPress will treat it the same.

Both the Emphasis tag and Italics tag designate what text to italicize. WordPress useswhen you click the Italicize button, but if you use thetag when typing in HTML mode WordPress will treat it the same.

Unordered Lists are lists that use bullets before each statement.

Ordered Lists are lists that use numbers or letters before each statement.

Both unordered and ordered lists use the List Item tag for each statement in their list.

The Header tags are used for page titles, headings, sub-headings, etc. There are 6 levels of Headers in HTML but there’s usually no reason to go beyond level 3. is the largest and treated as the most important and influential (by SEO standards). Each level after is less influential and appears in a smaller font size. Web pages shouldn’t have more than one tag. My themes use thetag for the page/post titles (that just makes sense to me). The default WordPress themes assign to the page/post titles. So if you’re using a theme that I designed, I advise you not to usetags in your text since there already is one on the page. Usefor your sub-headings andfor any smaller headings.

Tables help you separate content into columns and rows just like a spreadsheet or grid. They start and end with a Table tag. They also may contain the TBody Tags which contains the columns and rows of the table. Cellpadding is the space inside each table cell between the content and the border of the cell. Cellspacing is the space in between each cell. Border determines if there is a border around your cells and how thick it is.

TR stands for Table Row. Every table must have at least one row to start.

TD stands for Table Data Cell. This is the lowest level of the table tree and where your content goes. Every table has at least one table cell.

To create a simple table with two rows and two columns, your code would look something like this:

The Span tag is used for adding a Style (font size, color, etc.) to a specific piece of text or image. The content to be styled goes between the Span tags. The styles you want to assign go in the style quotes. This will require CSS knowledge.

The Image tag is an example of a tag that doesn’t have a closing tag. It closes itself by having its own “/” at the end of the code. The SRC attribute tells the browser the location source. In the example below the “logo.jpg” is located in the “images” folder. The ALT attribute tells the visitor what is supposed to be there if no image is visible. This is important for screen readers that can’t show images. This also helps search engines to determine what the image is depicting.

The Break tag is another “open tag only” bit of code. This is used to start a new line of text without starting a new paragraph.

Comment tags are used for adding notes for the web designer or content author to see in HTML mode. Anything within the Comment Tags will not be visible on the live web page by your visitors.

Search Engine Optimization

In order for your website to be found by Google users, proper SEO measures have to be implemented into your website. I’m going to cover the basics of the essential techniques to be used on any website.

Don’t expect to become an SEO expert after reading this. As a matter of fact, I’ll understand if you think this is too much information and you’d rather let someone else worry about it. But if you’re one of those people that likes to do everything themselves or just wants to be able to understand this stuff a little bit better… read on.

Link Popularity

Link popularity is the long (and never ending) process of getting your website’s link on as many quality websites as possible. Why? Firstly, they don’t call it the “Web” to make it sound scary. Websites linking to one another is what makes the Internet into an online web. Without other websites linking to yours, how’s the spider ever going to find you? And that’s exactly what Google and the other search engines send out – spiders (sometimes called “bots” for robots). Google sends out its army of web crawling spider programs to search out the web to see what’s out there and brings that information back to Google. The more links you have out there – the more times Google will find you.

Now it’s true that more links are better than fewer links, but more relative links is much better. For instance, putting your rock band website’s link on twenty random websites that have nothing to do with music will get Google to “crawl” your website. Unfortunately those links won’t convince Google that your website has a strong enough relevancy for the search results of “rock band”. If you put your band’s link on twenty music related websites, Google will definitely raise what’s known as your “ranking” in the search results.

A good place to start looking for websites to link from would be any companies that you partner with, affiliate yourself with, or just do business with. Politely ask them if they wouldn’t mind exchanging links with your website. I say exchange because they’ll most likely want you to post their link on your website – it’s only fair. If they know anything about search optimization, they should be glad to do it.

Other places to try:

• online business directories (ex: business.com, citysearch.com)
• local business directories (ex: local.yahoo.com, maps.google.com)
• organizations or groups your company belongs to (ex: chamber of commerce)
• directories that pertain to your field of interest (ex: lawyers could list on a lawyer directory)

Additionally, you can leave your link behind on blogs and forums that you visit that are related to your business. Don’t try selling yourself or spamming by leaving dozens of posts on one site. Actually participate in the blog and provide relevant, helpful feedback on the topics being discussed. Most will let you include your link or email. It’s a great way to leave a calling card and start a reputation of being helpful and informative.

There is also the social website scene. Websites like Twitter and LinkedIn are great for networking and getting your name out there. They can require a lot of time, but they are free services.

If you have the ability or resources to put out press releases, that would be another beneficial way to get your name out there. There are also websites for posting press releases online – so don’t limit yourself to just newspapers.

Always include your website
in everything you produce.
That includes press releases, business cards, print ads,
radio spots, direct mail, emails, etc.

If you’re having trouble finding places to link with, then check out your competition. In the Google search box type “links:companyname.com” (replace companyname.com with the actual domain of your competitor) and click Search. It will give you a list of all the web pages that Google has found that contain your competitor’s link. Many may be internal links within their own website but the rest will be from other websites. Go to these websites and see if you can exchange links as well. If anything, it should at least give you more ideas on how to find more websites to link with.

Keywords

Keywords and Key Phrases are what people type into search engines. Your goal as a website owner is to get the search engines to find your website if your content matches these key phrases.

First you have to decide what those key phrases are. Then you have to incorporate them into your content and into your code without going overboard. And stay away from generic terms.

Take me for example. If I focused just on the key phrase “website designer”, Google would just throw me into a pile of thousands of web pages it will find talking about website designers. If I focused on “WordPress website designer”, that would shorten the pile I’d be tossed into. But if I really wanted to rank high on searches, I could get even more specific with “WordPress website designer from
Massachusetts”. Now that will probably limit me to mostly local searches, but it will definitely get me ranked higher for such a specific search.

Keep in mind that Google crawls your whole website (hopefully) but treats each page of your website as a separate entry in its vast database. This is why you’ll be taken directly to the page for “Grandma’s Secret Strawberry-Blueberry Muffin Mix” on the 1,000,000 Favorite Recipes website if you searched for “strawberry blueberry muffin mix”. Google associated your search with that specific page and directed you to it as opposed to their home page. After all, you wouldn’t want to be brought to the website’s home page just to have to perform the search a second time, right?

Because search engines work like this, you have to treat each page as if it were an individual website. If you have a page that talks about computer keyboards, make sure it mentions “computer keyboards” at least three times in the text. Also make sure it’s in the Title and Description Meta tags. If you have images of the keyboards, include the phrase in the file names (computer-keyboard-01.jpg) and the Alternate tag (computer keyboard).

If you shorten the key phrase to just “keyboard”, then Google could confuse it with “electric keyboard” or “music keyboard” or “keyboard lessons”. So stay as consistent as possible. But don’t go overboard and repeat the phrase in every sentence. Your copy will seem unprofessional and unfriendly.

Title

The Title of your post or page is normally used for the Title Meta tag for that page. You’ll see it displayed at the top of your browser program. It is also used by Google in the search results as the clickable text. This shouldn’t be too long as you’ll notice Google won’t show the whole line of text if it doesn’t fit. A few of your most important keywords or phrases should be a part of the Title when ever possible.

Description

The Description Tag is also used by Google in the search results. Again it shouldn’t be too long as Google will only show so much. Without this Google usually grabs the first sentence in your page and maybe some text from further within your page. By entering your own description you improve the quality of what Google finds and what appears in Google.

Expanding on what I said earlier, you should treat each page as an individual just as Google does. Avoid using the exact same keywords, title, and description for each page. If it helps, think of each page as a person. You can use some of the same words to describe each but there should definitely be something unique about each one as well.

Ex: Babe Ruth, Brad Pitt, and Abraham Lincoln could each be found under “famous American male”. But only one would come up under “American president”, “pennies”, and “tall hats”.

General

Most of these settings should be self explanatory. This is where you name your blog, tell WordPress the URL of your main blog page, the Admin email address, set date and time formats to be used throughout the website, and more.

Always click “Save Changes” if you’ve changed any of the settings.

Two settings that are important to mention…

Membership – select this if you want to allow anyone to become a registered user. Uncheck this if you don’t want users or you plan to create all users manually.

New User Default Role – this determines what role a new user automatically becomes when they register. This is usually set to subscriber. Remember that you can assign new roles to each user on the Users page.

Note: I don’t know why they have this as a choice, but I don’t see why you would ever want all your users set as Administrators. That sounds like trouble. DON’T do that.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_General_SubPanel

Writing (settings for creating and editing posts/pages)

Size of the Post Box – sets the default size of the text box in the Edit mode. Although it can be re-sized by dragging the diagonal lines in the bottom right of the box, you can change this setting so that it always starts at a comfortable size.

Default Post Category – from the drop-down menu choose the category you do the most writing in. This way all those posts will automatically be set to go in that category.

Remote Publishing – these settings allow you to use desktop software to add posts to your website.

Post via Email – these settings allow you to post to your website through your email program.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Writing_SubPanel

Reading (settings for the live content)

Front Page Display – if your website is just a blog site, this setting will usually be set at “your latest posts” so your visitors see exactly that. The other option is to assign a static Page as your home page.

Blog Pages Show at Most – this sets how many posts to show at a time. If it is set at 10, you will see no more than ten posts at a time on any page.

Syndication Feeds Show the Most Recent – this sets how many RSS feeds (post titles) to be shown in a visitors’ RSS Feed Readers.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Reading_SubPanel

Discussion

Default Article Settings – the third box in this list controls whether or not you want to let visitors leave comments on your website. But you can override it per post/page if you wish.

Other Comment Settings – here you can control whether visitors are required to fill out their name and email, whether they need to be registered users, and whether to list all the comments for a post on one page or break it up (useful if you get over 20 comments per post).

Other settings here are about getting email notifications when someone leaves a comment and whether it needs an Administrator’s approval before being posted to the website.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Discussion_SubPanel

Media Settings

Here you can set the size (by pixels) of the thumbnails that WordPress creates when you upload images. You can also set a maximum width for larger images so you don’t upload images that are too big to fit in your website’s design.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Media_SubPanel

Privacy

This setting is only necessary if you wish to block search engines from “crawling” your website. This would be appropriate if your website has a more private function or isn’t finished being built.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Privacy_SubPanel

Permalinks

Permalinks are what make your web page URLs legible by search engines as well as visitors. By default your pages’ URLs looks something like this: http://www.yourdomain.com/?p=123

I use the “Month and Name” choice and so my URLs look like this: http://www.tenten71.com/blog/2009/09/know-your-web-browser/

As you can see the blog on my website is installed in a folder called “blog” and this particular post was posted in September of 2009 and has the permalink title of “know-your-web-browser” (which was created from the Permalink & Title options when I created the post).

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Permalinks_SubPanel

Miscellaneous

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Miscellaneous_SubPanel

The first page under the Tools button is Tools. This provides links to two browser applications (Turbo & Press This). They do not have any affect on your website directly and therefore your users will not be affected by them.

Note: I’ve never used either program so I really don’t know how good they are.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Tools_Tools_SubPanel

Import

If you’re re-installing your WordPress website from a WordPress backup file or moving your website from another blog-type web platform, you will be able to import your exported file here.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Tools_Import_SubPanel

Export

This is where you would perform one part of a WordPress backup. This export function will only backup your posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, and tags. It will NOT backup media files or the core WordPress files or theme files. For this, you will need to use an FTP program to download all of those files.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Tools_Export_SubPanel

Upgrade

This is where you can perform an upgrade to the latest version of WordPress when WordPress has an upgrade available. You may also re-install WordPress over itself if you have any corrupt files.

If you see any additional links under the Tools section, they may be for configuring or using certain plug-ins that have been installed on your website. Go to the corresponding plug-ins page for details concerning that particular plug-in/tool.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Tools_Upgrade_SubPanel

The Users button takes you to the section for managing your Users. The main area called Authors & Users gives a list of all your users with their usernames, actual names, email addresses, their assigned role, and how many posts they’ve created. If your website doesn’t accept users, then your name will be the only one listed.

You can edit each user’s info, assign them a role, or delete a user.

The first user created is always the Admin (administrator). This is a role that grants the user permission to make any and all changes to the website.

Other roles for users are:

Editor – Someone who can publish posts, manage posts as well as manage other people’s posts, etc.

Author – Someone who can publish and manage their own posts

Contributor – Someone who can write and manage their own posts but NOT publish posts

Subscriber – Someone who can read comments, leave comments, receive newsletters, etc.

By default new users are automatically assigned as Subscribers unless you change the setting (Settings – General).

The purpose for having these different roles is in case there’s more than one person making changes to your website or you want to give users or just certain users the ability to add content to your website.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Users_Authors_and_Users_SubPanel

Add New User

You can manually add new users using this button. Input their name, give them a username and password, assign a role to them, and enter their email address. You can even check off whether or not you want them to receive an email with the password automatically.

Note: Passwords should not be easy to guess. The password should be at least 8 characters long. Use upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols like ! ” ? $ % ^ & ).

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Users_Add_New_SubPanel

Your Profile

This is a shortcut to your (the person logged in) user settings. Here you can change your own password if you need to.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Users_Your_Profile_SubPanel

Plug-ins are small programs specifically designed for use with WordPress. They add additional features and functionality that don’t come with the core WordPress software.

Manage Plug-ins

Click the Plug-ins button on the left hand side of the Dashboard. This will take you to a page that lists the installed plug-ins for your website. The list displays the name of each plug-in with a description of the plug-in to the right. Beneath the plug-in’s name are links to either Activate or Deactivate a plug-in. There is also an Edit link. DO NOT try to edit a plug-in unless you have some PHP programming skills.

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins_Installed_SubPanel

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins_Editor_SubPanel

Find out more here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins_Add_New_SubPanel

One thing with plug-ins that will pop up ALL THE TIME is updates. This can be kind of annoying, especially if the developer of the plug-in updates it quite often. When a plug-in has an available update, a number will appear next to the Plug-ins button, indicating how many plug-ins have available updates. Sometimes the updates include added functionality, but most of the time they are created to fix “bugs” detected in the software.

It’s very easy to update a plug-in. Click on the Plug-ins button. On the plug-in’s page you’ll find highlighted sections near the plug-ins that have updates available.

Click on the “upgrade automatically” link and you will be taken to a new page while the plug-in downloads and installs the new files to your website.

Wait for the page to display the “Plug-in reactivated successfully” message. Then you can either click the “Return to Plug-ins page” link to upgrade other plug-ins or you can move on to something else.

NOTE: You may want to ask a web designer for advise before updating WordPress or any plug-ins. There’s always a chance that an update might not be compatible with other plug-ins or your current version of WordPress.

The following plug-ins should be installed on your website. These are basic instructions meant to help you understand more about how your website works and not so much for you to begin making major changes to your website. Even though you have the right to make any changes you wish to your own website, you may need the help of an experienced WordPress website designer to handle these more advanced features.

Akismet

This is probably the most widely used plug-in for WordPress. Akismet is a spam filter that checks incoming comments from your visitors. When it finds suspected spam comments, it will hold them for you to examine. You may then delete them, ignore them and let Akismet delete them or you may find a legit comment that you wish to allow to be posted on your website. Occasionally Akismet will label a legit comment as spam, but for the most part everything it catches is genuine spam.

A WordPress API code is required to install this plug-in. This involves going on to WordPress.com and creating an account with them. If you just want an account and not an actual website (because you’ve already got one), make sure to click on “I just want an account”.

Your website designer should have taken care of this for you.

Settings

Under Plugins, on the left side of the Dashboard, you will find the Akismet Configuration button. This is where the WordPress API code goes. You can also check the box telling Akismet to delete spam on older posts. This is a personal preference which depends on how you run your website and how busy your website is.

There are other settings related to comments under the Settings – Discussion link.

Find out more here: http://akismet.com/

All in One SEO Pack

SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization, is a very important part of any website. Some companies spend thousands of dollars a year on SEO in order to show up at the top of the page of the most commonly used search engines. Luckily WordPress has been developed to be very search engine friendly. With the help of the All in One SEO Pack, it is very easy to keep your website optimized.

It doesn’t have to cost thousands of dollars to achieve the best results, but it does require key knowledge of how search engines work and a lot of your time. This section will go over the All in One SEO Pack plug-in. For the “key knowledge” I’m referring to, see the section in this manual on SEO.

Settings

The settings can be found under Settings – All in One SEO.

First, make sure the plug-in is “enabled”. The next three boxes are to add a Title, Description, and Keywords to your website’s home page. This information will only be added to the corresponding Meta Tags within the page code of your home page.

The plug-in provides the ability to adjust the Title tags of many of the dynamic WordPress pages such as the Archive or Category pages.

Using the All in One SEO in your posts/pages

By itself, All in One SEO Pack will automatically generate a Description from your content. It usually takes the first sentence from your page just as Google does if you don’t have a Description Meta tag. It will also produce Keywords based on your WordPress Tags and Categories if you set it to do so. However, it’s much more effective and more powerful when you type in your own data for each post or page.

Go into the editing mode of any post or page on your website. Then scroll down to the section labelled All in One SEO Pack. There you’ll see a form to enter a Title, Description, and Keywords for that particular post or page.

To understand the importance of adding this extra data to each post/page for the sake of SEO, see the section in this manual on SEO.

Find out more here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

WordPress Database Backup

Once you’ve posted several articles and amassed a few dozen valuable comments, you don’t want your data to be lost. This is especially necessary if your web host doesn’t provide regular backups. The best web hosts should have backup servers for when the first one goes down or gets hacked. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take matters into your own hands and backup your own data.

Settings

You’ll find the settings for this under Tools – Backup.

The size of your backup file and the time it takes to perform a backup will depend on how much data is in your website.

I prefer to download the backup to my computer. Backing it up onto your web host’s server defeats the purpose of having your own backup. Emailing it to yourself may be difficult once your backup file becomes too large. If your website only has a few pages, then the emailing choice should be fine.

A compressed SQL file is what you will receive because WordPress uses a MySQL database.

NOTE: This will backup only the textual data from your website’s database (posts, pages, comments, tags, categories, settings, etc.). It will not backup any images, videos, PDF’s, audio files, and so forth. Hopefully you already have backups of all that data. It also doesn’t backup the actual WordPress files or theme files. Hopefully your web designer has those backed up if it wasn’t provided to you.

With FTP access to your website, you can backup all the WordPress files and your non-database files as mentioned in the above note.

For the most secure backup procedures you should use both the WordPress Database Backup plug-in and an FTP program. This way if anything disastrous happens to your website, you will be able to re-upload all your files from your computer and re-install the database from your compressed SQL file.

Find out more here: http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup

WP-reCAPTCHA

WP-reCAPTCHA is the WordPress version of the popular ReCaptcha software used to stop spammers from using automated software to create hundreds and thousands of false user accounts and comments on your website.

By now you’ve undoubtedly come across this plug-in in action on other websites. There are different forms of it and there are some similar programs out there that perform the same function.

It requires the user to prove they’re human and not some automated program by typing in a series of characters into a field. If you type it in incorrectly, you are given additional chances to try again. This is helpful since it’s meant to be difficult to read by the automated programs used by spammers.

To install this plug-in you must create a free account at recaptcha.net where you’ll be given two special codes to add to your plug-in before it can work.

This should have been handled by your web designer.

Settings

Under Settings – reCaptcha you will find all the settings for this plug-in and the location of the installed reCaptcha codes.

You should have it enabled for comments and the registration form.

You can alter its color to blend better with your website design (only a few choices are provided).

You may also use reCaptcha to hide emails displayed within your comments to prevent your users from being spammed. This is a personal preference. Your visitors may want their email addresses available or maybe you want only registered users to have access to visitor email addresses.

Find out more here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-recaptcha/