How to Start a Blog (Part 3)

This is Part 3 of the How to Start a Blog Series.  If you missed the first two parts you can find them here:  Part 1 and Part 2.

In the last post we started to navigate in our WordPress Dashboard and we installed a new theme on our blog.  Now we are ready to start adding some content.

7.  Adding Widgets
Adding Widgets is really important.  Widgets are what you find in the Sidebar of your Blog.  Some widgets add functionality for navigating through your blog.  Some widgets help to highlight people who are visiting your blog or leaving comments.  Spend some time looking through the widgets that are available with your theme.

You will find the Widgets in the Appearance section of the menu in your Dashboard.

I have recorded two short videos to show you how to find and add the widgets.  In these videos you will also see how to add two important widgets that will not come with your theme.  They are the Google Friend Connect Widget and the Twitter Counter Widget.  I HIGHLY recommend that you add these widgets to your site.

Adding Widgets Part 1

Adding Widgets Part 2

Some examples of widgets that help with navigation:
1.  Recent Posts
2.  Recent Comments
3.  Categories
4.  Pages
5.  Tag Cloud

Some examples of widgets that help with highlighting visitors
1.  Google Friend Connect
2.  Twitter Counter
3.  Networked Blogs

8.  Adding Plugins
Plugins are what really set the WordPress.ORG blog apart from the free blog sites.  There are so many POWERFUL plugins available to us and lucky for you they are now extremely easy to add to your blog.

Watch the videos below to see how to Add plugins to your blog and how to get the Akismet Plugin set up to filter Spam comments.

Plugins Part 1

Plugins Part 2

This video will walk you through the simple process of Adding a new Plugin and will also show you one of my favorite plugins Commentluv.

I will talk more about plugins in the next post and give you a list of the Plugins that I recommend.

9. Creating Posts
Even though we have already covered a lot in this post, there is still one more thing that I want to talk about. That is creating Posts. It is very important that you start creating posts as soon as possible. Even if you aren’t ready for anyone to see your blog yet, you should start creating posts.

Chances are that no one will find your blog until you start doing some key things to start generating traffic anyway (we will talk about those things in another post). So, don’t wait to put some content on your blog. You really want to have 5 – 7 posts already on your blog before you start working on driving traffic to your site.

Adding a New Post Part 1

Adding a New Post Part 2

At this point, you are well on your way!  We will continue to talk about getting you blog ready to share with the world in the next post.  Look for How to Start a Blog (Part 4) soon!

If you have any questions or feel like you just want to talk to someone send me an email on the Let’s Talk Page.