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Where Do I Store My Themes And Plugins On My Blog?

Where Do I Store My Themes And Plugins On My Blog?

Where do you store your themes, plugins and files on your web host and how should you store your files on your own client computer? When you install your wordpress blog using either fantastico or by doing it yourself, the file and folder structure is very specific, you can’t really change it, nor do you want to. There is no room for changing the built in structure, leaving you simply having to understand it so you can FTP your files to the proper places.

It’s actually quite easy and there’s really only two places you ever need to be aware of. Having a system of storing files on your own computer is, in my opinion, actually more important than understanding where they go on the server.

Before I even answer the question about where to store the themes on your blog, I would first want to show you how to store them on your own computer. You may either be building multiple blogs to blog about your multiple passions and interests, or you will be creating a blog about one subject. Either way, when you see a theme that you like, you’ll be downloading it to your computer first, then uploading it to your web host. As you see more themes that you like, you’ll probably want to download them as well. This may go on for a great number of themes, so organization is critical.

This principle is the same for themes and plugins

On your computer, you should have a separate folder for each of these items

1. All your themes
2. All your plugins
3. Your Blogs

The idea is to download any themes you like to your themes folder, then copy them to your local blog folder when you want to use one, then upload it to your web host server from there.

The same goes for plugins. If you have multiple blogs, you will want to store your plugins in one general “plugin” folder, then copy them to your blog plugin folder, then upload them to your web host server when you want to use them.

In the image below, you see a sample of how you could set up the folder structure on your computer for organizing your blog files.

When you want to save a file, Windows defaults to your “My Documents” folder so this is a good place to store all your data. It also makes it easy for doing backups as you only have to ever back up one “main” folder, your “My Documents” folder to get all your critical data.

A very easy way to make your blog documents come to the top of the list is to add a number in front of them. Windows sorts the folders alphabetically but puts precedence on numerals, so adding in the numbers 1, 2 , 3 or more will sort them in that order, numberically THEN alphabetically.

Create these three folders

1. My Webs
2. Themes
3. Plugins

Using the number, a period, a space, then the title of the folder

My Webs could as easily be My Blogs or My Websites or Blogs. I have used the term “My Webs” since the time of websites, so that’s what I’ve stuck with.

Inside you’re 1. My Webs folder, create as many folders as required for your domains. If you only have one domain right now, create the folder and title it with your domain name. This is where you will be storing your blog themes and plugins for that domain.

Inside that new folder now, your domain name folder, create two more folders called “themes” and “plugins”

In the example above, I have a folder inside 1. My Webs called “Blog Building Basics” and another called “Former Fat Guy Blog”. The Blog Building Basics folder has been expanded to show you the contents, the folders “themes” and “plugins”. This is for the themes and plugins that you are using for this blog.

When storing your plugins, it’s a good idea to include the version number of the plugin so that if there’s ever an update to the plugin, you know what version you have on your computer

Now that you’ve got a system in place for storing your files, themes and plugins for each domain you have, I’ll explain where to store these files on your web host server.

Where Do You Put Themes In Your Wordpress Blog

Wordpress uses a very simple folder structure and you really only need to know one folder and two subfolders

This is the actual screenshot of my Blog Building Basics folder structure that I took using the FireFTP free ftp client for Firefox. I’ve only included the right hand side pane of the FireFTP view to save space. The left hand side would have shown the files on my computer, but are not required for this tutorial. A few folders I created myself, but Wordpress created the WP-Admin, WP-Content and WP-Includes. As you can probably guess WP stands for WordPress.

It’s the WP-Content folder where you will be putting your attention. Inside the WP-Content folder are three more folders, two of which you will be using, namely the Themes and Plugins folders. I’ll let you guess which one is for which.

Step By Step Transfer Of Themes To Your Blog

1. Download the theme to your themes folder on your client computer
   ie: My Documents / 2. Themes
2. Copy the theme to your theme folder in your blog folder on your client computer ie: My Documents / 1. My Webs / Blog Building Basics / Themes /
3. Upload the theme to the wp-content/themes/ folder

When you’ve first started to create a blog, having a system of storing your files is critical. Store them all in My Documents for easy backup, use the number naming system to have the files sort themselves to the top of the structure and keep your files sorted by domain names. Wordpress creates a very easy structure for storing files and the only one you really have to know about is the WP-Content folder. It’s really that easy.

Popularity: 28%

3 Must Have Wordpress Plugins For Beginners

3 Must Have Wordpress Plugins For Beginners

When you first create a blog with Wordpress, I highly suggest that the first thing you do after customizing your Wordpress Dashboard Options is to install these 3 Plugins.

A plugin is like a utility for your blog that does something.

There are programmers all over the world who build these plugins to do little jobs for them and then they share them. Most of them are given away free of charge, so feel free to experiment with them if you like.

When I first create a blog for myself or clients, these are the first three I install and activate.

First 3 Plugins For Wordpress Beginners To Install

• Wordpress Database Backup
• Google XML Sitemap Generator
• Blog Stats

Why these three plugins?

Wordpress Database Backup Plugin - All your posts, links and any other data you input into Wordpress is stored in a database. If anything should happen to your blog or the web hosting server that it’s on, having a recent backup is pretty critical wouldn’t you think? The first plugin allows you to schedule a backup of your database tables hourly, daily, weekly or on demand. There are few options so that keeps it simple. Set it to email the zipped up database content file to you once a day or once a week depending on how often you blog.

Google XML Sitemap Generator - You have probably seen a sitemap but what the hell is XML? Not to worry, this one you don’t even have to understand, except for the fact that it tells Google, Yahoo and ASK.com about your new posts in a format that they can understand easily and effectively. Think “Marketing”. This plugin generates a search engine readable sitemap and then actually goes out and tells them about it (It pings the search engines and says “come look, I have a new post - here’s where it is!” ). This little plugin is extremely well built by Arne Brachold and I even gave a donation to him I was so impressed and appreciative of his efforts.

Again, with this plugin, simply download it, ftp it to your server using a free ftp client like FireFTP and then activate it. Once activated, go to options -> XML-Sitemap page and check off the fields that apply. Simple. There’s a lot of things the plugin asks on the options page, but most of the default options are fine.

Blog Stats - This one does just what it says, it gives you a nice little interface (within your free wordpress.com account) showing you your visitors, where they came from, what they’re viewing, how many came on which days, what they had searched for to find you and much much more. It’s not really critical at all, but it’s pretty good to know if you’re getting any traffic from your link building and especially knowing what your readers had searched for to find you. This little plugin was created by the Wordpress team at Automattic.

In order to use Blog Stats, you will have to have to have a username with wordpress. They show you your stats via an interface on wordpress. In order to see it, you have to login to your account AND you have to have an API code (Application Programming Interface code - like a unique id for your account). You’ll need this same API code for an anti-spam plugin as well, so if you already have it, you’re good to go.

To get the Wordpress Username and API code, go to www.wordpress.com (dot com, not dot org) and click on “signup”. You’ll see a page where you enter a username and a password for your account.

Below the fields where you enter your username and password you will see this questionquestion

Choose the second option as you see here. All you really need is the username so that you can get your API key.

To get your API Key, Follow the “where is my api key” instructions at Wordpress

Popularity: 100%

How To Configure The Wordpress Dashboard General Tab

How To Configure The Wordpress Dashboard General Tab

When you first create a blog, one of your first steps to complete before beginning any posting is to configure the various subtabs found under the Options tab in the Dashboard. This post focus’ on the “General tab” which shows up first in the list from left to right.

The general tab is where you configure your blog title, tagline, add the www to the domain name and set the blog timzone offset.

Note: throughout this article and this website, the term “Wordpress Tab” or “Tab” refers to the tabs within the wordpress architecture and not to be confused with the tabs within your Firefox browser.

1. Login to your Wordpress Dashboard, and click on the Options tab found in the light blue Wordpress navigation bar
2. If this is a brand new install of Wordpress with no Plugins installed, there should be 7 subtabs as options
3. Click on the “General” tab as shown in the image below

The first two fields, Weblog title and Tagline are just that, the title and tagline. Both are great places to get your keywords into your website and be descriptive at the same time. Depending on your theme, these two fields are used in different ways. The Weblog Title though is always used in the title field of your blog. It shows up in the top part of your browser window, in links shown in search engines and when people bookmark your site (more often than not). Keep them professional using your keywords and being as descriptive as possible.

Add The WWW To Your Wordpress Blog Address

I want to draw your attention to the next two fields, Wordpress Address (URL) and Blog Address (URL) (you’ll see them circled in red)

By default, your blog is installed without the www. In my case, the default was http://blogbuildingbasics.com. You can leave this if you like, however, when you link to your website, be aware that http://domainname.com and http://www.domainname.com are two different domains in the eyes of the search engines.

It is my opinion that you should always add the www in front of your domain name in these two fields before you do any posting or marketing of your blog.

To update them, simply put your curser in that field and add the www. in front of your domain name.

Enter Your Timezone Offset

The last thing of note here is the “Times In The Weblog Should Differ By” field. This is so that when you’re looking at anything that is time stamped in your blog (ie: future posting), you will know when the post is really coming out. You may find that you use this more often than you think in your upcoming blogging experience, so best to just enter your GMT offset here. I’m in mountain time which is GMT -7, so that’s what I put in the box.

Press the update button to complete this portion of the General Tab configuration.

Popularity: 80%

How To Configure The Wordpress Dashboard Writing Tab

How To Configure The Wordpress Dashboard Writing Tab

After configuring the wordpress dashboard general tab, the next one is the writing tab. The writing tab sets the parameters for your “write a post” page where you enter the actual blog post information.

The options for this tab include the size of the post box ,convert emoticons to graphics for display, setting the default post category, post via email and update services.

This tutorial will focus on the size of the post box and update services

Note: throughout this article and this website, the term “Wordpress Tab” or “Tab” refers to the tabs within the wordpress architecture and not to be confused with the tabs within your Firefox browser.

Configure The Writing Tab

1. Login to your Wordpress Dashboard, and click on the Options tab found in the light blue Wordpress navigation bar
2. If this is a brand new install of Wordpress with no Plugins installed, there should be 7 subtabs as options
3. Click on the “Writing” tab as shown in the image below

Size Of Post Box

You’ll see that I have “size of the post box” circled. The number you set here has an impact on how much room you have to write your blog post. By default, the number is 10 which refers to 10 rows of space for writing in.

Go have a look at this right now. Login to your wordpress blog, then click the “write a post” link from your dashboard (or click the “write” tab next to “dashboard”).

Make a note of the size of the “post” box under “title”. Not too big is it? If you haven’t already change this setting, it’s exactly 10 rows tall. Personally, I prefer it twice that size just so I can see more of my post without having to scroll through it while I’m editing it.

Now, go back to the “writing” tab by clicking on Options -> Writing and change this value to 20 so that it doubles the writing space available.

Once you’ve done that, we’ll skip over the blog by email part and straight down to the bottom, the “Update Services”

Update Services

You may or may not have heard about ping or pinging, but essentially it’s a way for to tell someone or a service that something has happened. Pinging can be used in various ways, but in this case it’s to tell some blog announcement services that “hey, I’ve got some new content, please update your catalog”.

A ping is just a little nudge saying, I’m here, and I’ve got something new. This is an over simplification, but you get the idea.

The “Update Services” is a list of places that accept pings from you so that they can alert their readers or update their lists and put a link to your new post on their website.

What happens is that you ping them, then they come to your website and see what’s new. Then they take the new title of your blog post and usually the first paragraph and update their websites with the new info. This then displays your latest work on their sites so that interested parties can come back to your site and read.

Pinging is a good thing.

Too much pinging can be a bad thing.

By default, this box has one entry in it.

Here are a few more entries that I use myself.

http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

Copy and paste these items into your Update Services text field.

Keep in mind that whenever you publish a new post, part of what your web host is doing is then pinging these places. That takes time and server resources. It can slow things down just slightly, so you may notice a slight hesitation in response time. I know of places that give you huge lists of places to ping and then your website just times out when you hit publish. This is a stripped down version of that huge list that I find works.

You get to ping a bunch of places to announce your work, your blog post publishes in a timely manor, you get more traffic and everyone is happy.

Once you’ve configured this “writing” tab on your wordpress dashboard, press the update button. Then go have a look at your “write a post” page and see how the change looks.

Popularity: 76%

How To Create Search Engine Friendly Page Titles

How To Create Search Engine Friendly Page Titles

A search engine optimized (seo friendly) page title or blog title is one of the most important aspects of your post. In a previous post, I wrote about how to write a good post title and why it must be written in a way to capture the readers attention. In this video, Search Engine Optimization expert Aaron Wall, author of SEOBook, shows where the title is used, why it’s important and how to write a good title to capture attention

How To Customize Your Permalink Structure

How To Customize Your Permalink Structure

Making a decision about your blog link structure is in the top 5 things you should do before publishing your first blog post. Your link structure is what you see in your browser address bar when you’re looking at a website, blog or blog post page and it’s one of the most important parts of getting traffic to your post.

One of the best ways to rank higher for your keyword phrase is to have them in your domain name. A blog that is about photography would rank higher and come up in more searches if the domain name was something like www.herviewphotography.com rather than www.herview.ca for example. “Her View” is catchy yes, and of course good branding, but for organic search engine traffic from people looking for fine art photography, www.herview.ca would have to rely on a lot of “on page” optimization.

Having the keyword phrase in the actual url of the website page or blog post is a very important and often overlooked aspect of blog design.

In the example below, you see the URL of another post in this blog

Here you see the domain name Blog Building Basics, followed by the category name of the post in question, “blogging tips” and then the actual post title. The post title is followed by .html which indicates that it is to be viewed in a web browser.

This format is but one way set up your permalink structure and is why I wrote earlier about the importance of a good post title. Aaron Wall, the author of SEOBook, describes how to create search engine friendly page titles in his free search engine optimization video I recently posted and this is where it all applies, the custom permalink structure.

What Is A Permalink?

Permalink stands for Permanant Link and is used to describe the full link to the blog post or website page.

When you first go to a blog, you might see a couple of posts on the front page but each post has it’s own page all by itself as well. The link to that single post is called the Permanant Link or Permalink.

Choosing A Custom Permalink Structure

A Wordpress blog handles all this through the Custom Permalink Structure setup on the Permalink sub tab of the Wordpress Options Tab.

When you first create a blog with Wordpress, the default setting is chosen. You see in the screen shot that the default setting uses the post id number rather than the title.

Ugly Permalinks

If your post is about “Fine Art Photography From Peru” and your post number is 24, the link to your post would be www.herviewphotography.com/?p=24 . As described above, www.herviewphotography.com/fine-art/fine-art-photography-from-peru.html would be much more descriptive and get your keyword phrases in the url.

Using the post id number as your url descriptor is called “ugly permalink”

The Date and Name based setting inserts the year, the month and the day, then the post name without the .html but instead a trailing slash. Much better than the default and used for very busy blogs, ones with many posts and when post titles might duplicate.

If you use the custom one like I suggest, you’d have to do well not to duplicate a post title as your blog ages because Wordpress would gag on it, not knowing which post to show “fine art photography” from March 21st 2004 or “fine art photography” from Dec 22nd, 2006. Same title, two different posts, …hiccup… crash.

Pretty Permalinks

If you think your page titles are going to be unique all the time, with no duplication, the best choice for a new blogger in my opinion is to use the custom setting and then specify the custom structure. These url’s that use the full post title instead of numeric descriptor are called “pretty permalinks”

Insert your custom structure into the field provided. In my example, I used two Wordpress Permalink variables %category% and %postname% with the slashes to separate them and followed with “.html” to complete it.

If you use a lot of the same post titles but want to create some sort of uniqueness, I would opt for one of these two custom structures

/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%.html

Or

/%category%/%post_id%/%postname%.html

This last option gives you a keyword phrase from the category, inserts the post id to make it unique, then finishes with the post title and then .html

What you’re looking at in the example above are variables that Wordpress uses. A percent sign is wrapped around a word and is then used internally to pull the data from the database based on the variable. The variable %category% is replaced with the actual category. In the case of two categories being used, Wordpress uses the one with the lower id number.

Look here for a complete list of permalink structure tags, and more information about this as not all combinations of structure tags work together.

It’s important if not critical to get this done right before you even write your first post because if you’ve got any inbound links to your blog or blog pages and then change your permalink structure, all those links will now be dead (404 not found). When you first create a blog, choosing a custom permalink structure should be on the top of your list. Besides, it’s easy, the entire Options tab setup takes about 5 minutes or less.

Popularity: 87%