Mechanics — The Nuts and Bolts of Building a WordPress.ORG Weblog
Welcome to the Weblogging 101 Mechanical Shop. This is the place to find help on building the physical structure of your weblog. We will be looking at formatting, styling, widgeting, and coding.
Unlike the discussion of building weblog content, finding a writing style, and living the philosophy you have chosen; the process involved in building the weblog itself can be reduced to a simple step by step checklist. Each step on the checklist can then be illustrated and explained in simple language.
The Basic To-Do List
- Register Domain Name
- Purchase Hosting Plan
- Download WordPress software
- Its a zip file
- Unzip
- Download and install FTP software
- Setup FTP access to the host server
- Need FTP address, username, password
- FTP to host server
- Upload WordPress folder
- Complete installation
- Tip: immediately set up a second admin account with a username and password you will be able to remember
- Set up Domain Name
- Shop for themes
- Choose one or more, download and unzip
- Tip: If you see a theme that looks interesting, but you’re not sure if you want it, go ahead and download it anyway. Zip files don’t take up a lot of room, and it will be much faster to find it again on your own computer, than to go searching the web for it, if you do later decide you want it.
- FTP to host server
- Upload theme folder to wp/content/themes
- At WordPress Dashboard click Design -> Themes -> Select theme
- Create custom banner image in Photoshop
- Upload banner
- Edit header.php to display custom banner
- Edit/customize sidebar
- Customize column widths
If you choose a host that offers “one-click install” you can initially skip steps 3 - 9.
However, you will still want to acquire an FTP program and learn to use it in order to add themes and plugins. Also, One Click hosts usually do not update to new WordPress versions promptly. You may also want to install updates, which will require FTP access.
