best wordpress plug-in

If you have been following my blog from the beginning, you know that I am building this piece by piece and keeping you posted on each step in the process.  Today, I installed my first plug-in, there will be many more to follow, but I am taking this slowly at first.  One of the most important plug-ins and the one I recommend above all others is the “All in One Seo Pack.”  This plug-in allows you change the title, meta description and tag for every single post you make.  This is much better than the default which uses your blog tagline.  With this plug-in you can maximize and customize your posts to make sure you are getting the most bang for your buck on the search engines.

Another great feature is that you can optimize your home page by customizing your home title, home description, and home keywords.  If you look at the title in your browser, you will see, “blogging tips for beginners,” I created this title in the option section of this plug-in.  I also filled in the description and the keywords. 

This plug-in is so easy to use and so useful that I recommend that every blogger install it immediately.  In my opinion, it is the best and most important plug-in.

how to add a logo to wordpress theme

As you can can see, I am still in the process of setting up my blog.  Yesterday, I wrote about the basics of setting up a WordPress blog and picking out and setting up a theme.  Yesterday, I added a simple logo to my header.  I know, it is very simple, but much better than what was there before.  Furthermore, it was free, and as you know I am trying to make money with this blog not spend money.  How did you get a free logo?  Well, I asked for it, I went to the freebie section of Digital Point forums and posted a thread and said I started a new blog and was wondering if anyone wanted to create a simple free logo for me.  Sure enough, within 5 minutes I had several responses and a good looking simple logo.  The next step is to get the logo on the blog.  This is a lot easier than you may think.  There are a lot of ways to go about this but if you are like me and want the easiest way, follow these steps.

• Go into you wp-admin and open your theme editor, then find and open the header.php
• Find this line of code   ——>    <h1><a href=”<?php echo get_option(‘home’); ?>/”><?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?></a></h1>   <p class=”Desc”><?php bloginfo(‘description’); ?></p>
• Erase it
• FTP your new image to the image folder in your template folder
• Open Style.css
• Find the code  —–>   Header .LS { position: absolute; top: 30px; left: 30px; background: url(images/LogoIcon.png) no-repeat left top; width: 40px; height: 43px;}
• Replace “LogoIcon.png” with your logo name and then resize the width and height accordingly.

There you go, pretty easy, right. 

Stay tuned, tomorrow I will write about which Plugins I am using and how to install them.

How do you start a blog?

In keeping with the theme of this blog, maybe the title shoud read (What I did when starting my blog)  Anyway, this is day two for me with my new blog.  I wanted to write a post about the steps that I took to get to this point.  This will be very helpful to those of you who are just starting out or maybe found this by searching Google on “how to start a blog.”  I am not going to get into the WordPress versus Blogger debate.  My opinion is if you want to be a serious blogger than get your own hosting account and domain name.  If you are just doing this as a hobby or to keep in touch with friends, then blogger is fine.  My blogs are all hosted with GoDaddy and I am using WordPress to operate my blogs.  So step one will be to go to GoDaddy and purchase a domain name and a hosting account.  Once you have your hosting account you can install WordPress with the click of a button in the control panel.  The next thing that I did after installing WP is searched for cool themes.  If you want to be taken seriously it is imperative that you change the default theme.  It is so easy to do that there really are no excuses.  A simple search will yield hundreds of free WP templates to choose from.  I am using the Illacrimo theme on this blog, I really like it!  Here are the steps to change your theme.  First, find the theme you like and download it onto your desktop.  Next, unzip the file and upload it to your themes directory, which is in the content directory. If you are using GoDaddy it is simple to use their ftp client.  The final step is to go into your admin section and activate your theme.  You should then be good to go.  Yesterday, I also changed the logo and added some useful Plug-ins.  I will get into those topics in another post as I am trying to keep my posts between 250-350 words each.

Where do you get off calling yourself the “tycoon blogger?”

This is the first post on my new blog.  I have been thinking all night about a creative idea for a title but this was the best I could come up.  I had a long day and my brain is fried right now, so cut me some slack. 

Please read my ”about” page to learn about me and see where I am coming from.  The bottom line is that I have always been an entrepreneur and I run a successful “offline” business .  I have recently turned my attention to making money online and this blog with chronicle my adventures.  I started blogging a couple of years ago and now run several blogs, including a popular Career Advice Blog .    My goal is simple, I want to have fun, make friends and make MONEY.  Yes, I said it…Make Money!  I know a lot of bloggers are afraid to actually admit that as one of their goals.  Hey, I am a business man not a social worker.

What you can expect from this Blog

I will be my best to provide relevant and helpful information on a variety of topics related to growing a business, both online and offline.  Of course, I believe blogging and social networking play a huge part in that, so yes…I will be blogging about blogging and social media as well.

Wish me well!