Slowly and insidiously, we begin to spend more time hard at work blogging, sometimes working well into the night to finish our daily posts and implement our backlinking strategies and linkwheels.

It’s not long before the success of our blogs become our main obsession and we eat, sleep and breathe our online business. The desire to make money online keeps us afloat above the stress and anxiety, but once worry and doubt  appear in our online lives it can be very hard to stop this kind of thinking. We start to worry about whether or not we’ve chosen the right affiliate products and networks, we worry about our customer satisfaction if we market directly to them, we worry about how much we are spending on ppc campaigns and how they are performing, and the biggest worry is whether we will get paid and of course when. We also have something in the back of our blogging minds that makes us wonder whether we are doing the most we can with this idea of doing business online. It’s easy to start wondering if everything we are doing is proper procedure or if we are breaking any advertiser rules.

What he have done essentially is unknowingly developed the paranoia of small business owners and we expect something terrible to happen to us while we wait for success online. Anyone going through these thoughts and worries needs to take a step back and relax a little. Starting a blog can be fraught with problems and situations that you were not prepared for but anything that comes up can be worked out in the end. Changing the way you look at things and keeping a positive attitude can keep you steadily blogging amid the stress and feelings of failure. Why? Because every online failure or problem is nothing more than a lesson learned. Many new bloggers put so much pressure on themselves to do everything perfectly that they give it up in disgust because it was just to hard on them physically and emotionally. It doesn’t have to be that way though, if you take the time to put everything to do with your online business into perspective. Life truly is what you make it and so is your online life. So what if you didn’t know you needed backlinks to find online success? Now you do. So what if you aren’t able to post every single day? Post when you can, there is no law that says you have to do otherwise. The bottom line is, don’t be so hard on yourself as a new blogger this is a learning process and you will get there in your own time and preferably stress free.

As a new blogger you’ve probably gotten Wordpress all loaded up to your server by now and even though you might not be too familiar with the Wordpress Admin dashboard you can’t wait to get your blog on and write your first post. While you could by all means get straight to blogging your heart out, one thing you should be aware of is that there are a few Wordpress settings that you will need to configure inside the Wordpress dashboard prior to publishing your first post. Let’s go through them together and once we’re through you can get down to the serious business of blogging about it all. So when you’re ready, log into your Wordpress Admin and let’s have a look around.

As of the writing of this post the current version of Wordpress is version 2.7 Coltrane and it is quite different from other versions of the software and requires some getting used to even for seasoned users, so here’s the nitty gritty:

Once you’ve logged into your account you will be in the default dashboard which is like your blog’s command center. You will be able to see lots of valuable information here like your blogs status in regards to number of posts, comments waiting to be moderated, who links to your blog, your recent drafts, latest news from the Wordpress development blog, and many other pieces of useful and interesting information about your blog.

While the dashboard is a helpful information center, the real heart and soul of managing your blog is found in the list of links in the left sidebar of your dashboard and they are labelled Posts, Media, Links, Pages, Comments, Appearance, Plugins, Users, Tools and Settings.
The first thing you should do to set up your blog is to change the password that was generated for you when you first installed Wordpress and that can be done by clicking on the Users link. You should see your profile and an option to edit the settings there. You will be able to change your email address, the color scheme of your dashboard, your user nickname and of course your password so make sure it’s something you can remember and note it down somewhere just in case. If you are setting up a multi-user blog this is also the area where you would add users and set their access levels.

The very next place you should go to is the Settings link and more specifically the General tab. You will need to add your blog title and tagline if you didn’t already do so when you installed Wordpress. Setting your time zone is also crucial to do as your blog posts and comments will always be off otherwise. It will also wreak havoc on your scheduled posts if your time zone is set incorrectly.

The next important area in the Settings link is the Reading tab. This is the area where you will choose if you want your blog to have a static front page such as a Home or Welcome page or if you’d rather have your blog posts running down your page instead. You will be able to set any page you’ve created as the front page of your blog so make sure to set it up before selecting this option. You also have the choice of how many posts to display on your blog’s front page and whether they display the full post or a small expert if you decide not to go with the static front page.

Next in the Settings link you should access the Media tab. This lets you adjust the default sizes for your thumbnails, medium and full-size post images.

The next option in the Settings link is the Privacy tab. You probably already said yes to have your blog visible to search engines when you set it up, but just in case you didn’t just double-check that your settings are set to being visible to everyone including search engines and such.

The last but probably most important setting you should set appropriately in your Wordpress blog is what sort of permalink structure you plan on using for your posts. This step may be last on the list here but it is crucial that you set this correctly so your post urls are defined the way you want them right away before you start posting…once you’ve set up your permalink structure you never have to do it again so take the time to decide your permalink structure now. If you’re having trouble deciding which permalink structure is for you I’ve written a post about choosing the structure that’s right for you as well as instructions to make changes to your permalinks here.

Now you’re all set, go on and write your first post…send me a link to it I’d love to read it.

Until next time new bloggers…have fun on the Internet and get those blogs up and running!

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Congratulations on getting your Wordpress blog installed! Now you can start blogging…what’s that? You despise the default Kubrick theme that comes with all Wordpress installations? I for one find that very hard to believe, I mean look at that theme…it’s simple, it’s rounded at the corners….it’s a sea of blue…

Okay, okay so there’s probably only 2% of the population that actually likes the Kubrick default Wordpress theme…and the only other theme that comes with Wordpress by default is the Classic theme and it’s not so hot either. So what’s a blogger to do? You could find some pre-made Wordpress themes and install them to your blog as is, you could modify a pre-made Wordpress theme with your own graphics and artistic style, and then install it to your blog, or you could get wild and create your own theme…okay, okay we’ll save the wildness for another post…

So today’s post is about where to find Wordpress themes. Back in the old days of Wordpress there were some pretty hokey-looking themes available for bloggers and they were pretty basic in their functionality. Nowadays Wordpress themes or templates, are nothing short of a marvel of superb design with breath-taking appeal. This new breed of Wordpress themes is not only stylish and good-looking, but they have an amazing level of functionality that will allow you to do things with your blog that you may not have known was even possible to do before.

If you’re just starting out with Wordpress and you’re looking for some excellent Wordpress template resources then here is a list of where you can get some free or not-so-free themes from:

WP Start – This site offers literally TONS of free Wordpress themes and the best part is that most of them are free premium themes. They also offer a great selection of priced themes but the costs are very reasonable.

Brian Gardner offers the Revolution based series of high quality, professionally designed WordPress themes with included support packages. His premium Wordpress themes can take your blog to a higher level or give your website that professional edge with a not so blog-like look. Click here to visit Brian Gardner Media LLC website

Wordpress not only gives you the most awesome blogging software on the planet, but they also provide a huge assortment of themes and templates for your blog as well. The Wordpress themes repository has the largest selection of themes anywhere on the Internet and they’re all free so if your on a budget, you won’t break the bank.

freewpthemes has around 150 free WP templates to choose from so be sure to have a browse over there.

Also have a look at The Wordpress Themes Archive where you can download a whole shwack of themes in one go or pick and choose between the more than 2000 themes freely available.

Happy Wordpress theme hunting bloggers!

When I upgraded my Wordpress version to 2.7, the ability to schedule posts in Wordpress 2.7 no longer worked. I could still schedule a post but the scheduled time would come and go with no future post being published. All that I could see in the Wordpress dashboard was “Missed Schedule” no matter what I tried to fix this problem.

The Missed Scheduled Wordpress Posts Problem

After searching for a solution to Wordpress missed schedule problems it was clear that no-one seemed to know exactly why it was happening and how to fix it. The problem of future posts not working in Wordpress happened to some folks who upgraded from version 2.6.5 and not to others, and it happened to some folks who changed web hosts and again not to others. The Wordpress missed schedule error has also been known to happen to folks on one or two of their blogs and not on their other blogs. So clearly this issue needs to be resolved in future versions of Wordpress but for now there are a few suggestions that have been offered on the Internet.

Some fixes that were suggested for the scheduled Wordpress posts not working problem:

You can see details of what some other fixes others have suggested as well as my fix in the Wordpress support forum in regards to this issue here

Here’s My Wordpress Missed Scheduled Posts Fix:

I’m a simple kind of chick and as such I downloaded Wordpress version 2.6.5 and had a look at the wp-cron.php file in the root directory as well as the cron.php file that resides inside the “wp-includes” folder. The code inside both files is quite different from the the Wordpress 2.7 file versions. In Wordpress 2.7 wp-cron.php there are references to “local-time” and the doing_cron option is set to zero. This is not present in the 2.6.5 versions of these files. So I decided that it might be possible that if your web server time is off by even a few seconds from the Wordpress official time the scheduled post may not go through. This is because the doin_cron argument is set to zero making it absolutely necessary that your web server and your Wordpress time match up pretty much exactly. Now I could have changed something in the code of these files but since I didn’t want to mess with variables I am unfamiliar with, so here’s what I did:

While this fix may not be for everyone and “Frankensteining” (yes I just made that word up) your Wordpress installation is not the best solution, it is a temporary fix until the next version of Wordpress is released and the issue is hopefully resolved.

I have included for download the two Wordpress files needed to fix the missed scheduled post issue in this post. Click on the download button, unzip the files and follow the directions in this post or the readme file that is included with the two files. Please note that these two files were obtained directly from the official Wordpress repository and are guaranteed virus-free.

Hopefully now that you’ve made the decision to start your own self hosted blog you’ve registered a domain name, bought your blog’s hosting, and changed your name servers so that your domain name points to your hosting account. If all of the above went smoothly then your site should be visible when you type it in the address bar even if it is just a hosting company placeholder page. Now it’s time to get your blogging software into your web space so that you can get to the serious business of blogging everything and anything that is on your mind.

In this post I will show you how to use Fantastico scripts to install your blogging platform and in a separate post I will also show you how to manually install your blogging platform without using scripts as it’s worth knowing how to do it that way too.

The benefits of using Fantastico scripts to install your blog are that it’s fast and simple enough to have your blog online and ready for you in less than five minutes. So if you’re ready, let’s get started!

Step 1 – Consult the Welcome Email Your Hosting Company Sent You

When you signed up for your blog hosting account you would have received a welcome email that contained details about your cPanel and how to access it. It will have a URL in it that looks something like:

This area of your hosting account is username and password protected so make sure you’ve located that information in your welcome email and enter it when you access your cPanel.

Step 2 – Accessing the Fantastico scripts

Once you’ve gotten to the cPanel interface you will see a lot of information and it can be a bit confusing and overwhelming. The information on the left side of the screen is a running log of your account activity like how much web space and bandwidth you’ve used. The right side of the screen is what we’re interested in and it is separated into rows and by category with names like Preferences, Mail, Files, Logs, Security, Domains, Databases, Software, and Advanced. While each section has its use which we will cover at a later time, for the purposes of this post we want to set up your blogging platform so scroll down to the section marked “Software” and you will see a blue happy face and that is your Fantastico scripts section so go ahead and click on it.

Step 3 – Choose Your Blogging Platform in Fantastico Scripts

Congratulations! You’re ready to pick your blogging platform from one of the many scripts available to you by your blog host.  There will be many options to choose from such as content management platforms and ecommerce, but this tutorial covers setting up Wordpress only. Once you’ve installed Wordpress you will have learned how to use the scripts in this section and you can experiment with the other choices available if you like. Locate Wordpress from the list of scripts in the section marked “Blogs” and click on it.

Step 4 – Setting Up Wordpress In Fantastico Scripts

Once you’ve clicked on Wordpress you will see a short description, the support forum and a link marked New Installation so click on it. The next screen is the first of three steps in your Wordpress installation.

You will now be able to view your Wordpress blog by typing in your domain name in the address bar and to log into your Wordpress administration dashboard you must add wp-admin to your domain name like this:

That’s it…you’re done! Now you can start blogging it up! Good luck!

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