Tuesday, March 17, 2009

WordPress Tutorial

This is our 2nd Tutorial in our Blogging and Social Media Tutorial Series. This post, we will be focusing on WordPress.


WordPress is another popular blogging service similar to Blogger. While it is not our recommended blogging service because it does not support our media player widgets, there are other ways to promote your products through this service.


Getting Started


WordPress answers some basic questions about signing up and setting up your blog here:

http://support.wordpress.com/getting-started/


Wordpress.tv is a great resource for WordPress video tutorials. Below is a video tutorial that walks you through the sign up process: http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/05/signing-up-with-wordpresscom/


Dashboard


One of the biggest differences between WordPress and Blogger is the WordPress Dashboard. The below tutorial gives you an overview of the WordPress Dashboard

http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/05/the-wordpresscom-dashboard-introduction/


Adding an “About Me” (or any other static) page


One of the first things you’ll want to add to your new blog is an “About Me” page to introduce yourself. This is a great place to add a photo of yourself, biographical information and links to your products for sale at iAmplify. This tutorial will walk you through this process: http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/14/adding-an-about-me-or-any-other-static-page/


To add affiliate links to the “About Me” page or any blog post:


  1. Write out the Product Title or how you would like the linked text to appear in your post
  2. Highlight the text you have written with your mouse and choose the link button on the Nav bar of your post (it's the broken chain symbol)
  3. A pop up will appear and you will need to paste in your affiliate link URL into the Link URL field.
  4. To find your affiliate link for a specific product, just search for the product you would like to link to in the affiliate interface.
  5. Once you find the product, click on the “Get Links” link for that product and find the text link. Copy that code and paste into a text document. It will be look something like the below. I’ve highlighted the part that is the actual tracking link in the html code:

<ahref="http://affiliate.iamplify.com/scripts/t.php?aid=c9d4b4cc&bid=f84ab092"><b>Click here to buy <i>Heartworm Prevention Naturally!</i></b><br/><imgsrc="http://affiliate.iamplify.com/scripts/sb.php?aid=c9d4b4cc&bid=f84ab092" width="1" height="1" alt="" border="0"/></a>

  1. The final URL you will paste into the Link URL field of your blog post will look like this: http://affiliate.iamplify.com/scripts/t.php?aid=c9d4b4cc&bid=f84ab092
  2. You can also choose a target (whether you want the link to open in the same window or in a new window), choose the title of the link (this is the title that will appear if you mouse over the link) and choose a class
  3. Click on insert link and you are done!


Blog Appearance


Next you’ll probably want to customize the appearance of your blog. You can access themes (blog templates) under the Appearance section in your dashboard’s left nav. This tutorial will walk you through the process

http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/14/previewing-and-activating-themes-2/


Displaying a List of Links in your Sidebar


You can customize what people see in your sidebar by adding widgets. You can also access this feature under the Appearance section in your dashboard’s left nav. Even though WordPress doesn’t have an html widget option like Blogger does, you can set up permanent links to your products for sale at iAmplify by adding a links widget to your sidebar. You can extract the affiliate link to your product pages as instructed above. This tutorial will walk you through the process of adding links to your sidebar: http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/05/displaying-a-list-of-links-in-your-sidebar/


Arranging your Links into Categories


You can categorize your links as well. So if you have several different products or just want to differentiate your iAmplify links from other links, you can choose a category name for these links. For example, you could choose to name your products for sale through iAmplify as Downloads. This tutorial will walk you through the process:

http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/05/arranging-links-into-categories/


Other tutorials


I’ve detailed the basics of setting up your WordPress blog and featuring your content for sale, but there are many more tutorials you may want to watch. Below are some other tutorials you may want to check out.


Customizing your Writing Settings

Creating your WordPress.com Profile

Changing your Reading Settings

Writing & Publishing a Post

Adding Categories & Tags to Your Posts

WordPress SEO & Optimization Strategies

The Tag Cloud Widget

The Pages Widget