Essential Tweak for Turning Default WordPress Install to a Website or a Blog

Customise Default WordPress Install

WordPress is probably the most popular self hosted blog software online today (hosted version is also very popular). You can easily turn any web hosting space with MySQL and PHP to a fully functional website within a few minutes with the help of WordPress. Setting up a website or a blog this way can save you hundreds of pounds off the cost of having a website created for you by a web designer.
Many webmaster have created websites exactly the way I described above, one thing that put most visitors to such site off are lazy webmasters who do not bother to customise WordPress after install or take the time to tweak and fine tune it.  The list below show some of the items that can be quickly tweak or customise to turn a default WordPress install to a good looking, SEO optimised and customised website or blog.

1. Change the default skin – This is a must, there are hundreds of free and premium wordpress skins ou there, there is not excuse for keeping the default WordPress skin after install.
2. Remove the default about us page – It is amazing the number of webmasters who cannot even bother to add their own contents on the default “About” page on wordpress. Even if you do not want to write and about us page, delete the default WordPress about text.
3. In the tagline, change “This is just another wordpress to something relating to your contents.
4. Remove all the links on the blogroll and replace it with links you like or no link at all.
5. Set the time zone to your location
6. To make it more search engine friendly, change the permalink.

Making money through blogging

Blogging is a recent phenomenon and thanks to the internet is becoming very popular with many people. The internet is a space where some of the money making avenues like freelancing; affiliate marketing, online surveys have made their bow and have been well received by the masses. However, I am sure that people would want to know as to how they can generate income through blogging in particular and this article is an attempt to give you some suggestions on the same.

It does take some time to make money through blogging. While you may keep making stray income from content that you write for other blogs, it is often not sustainable over a period of time. You need to be your own boss and for that you need to create your own blog and follow the steps outlined below.

How to create your own blog

Well, the options for creating a free blog that is your own are in the form of word press and Google’s own blogger. However, if you are really serious about making this a profitable and long term activity, then you need to host your blog with a domain name. This facility is also free with word press and being very user friendly with many supporting tutorials, you should not have any problem hosting one. New bloggers find this an excellent help.

Choose a subject

You need to choose a subject about which you are passionate about and on something which you can contribute regularly. Remember that it needs to be interesting enough to drive people to visit your blog on a regular basis and for that you have to be sure that you are choosing a subject that is dear to you and you have sufficient inputs that you can give.

If it is something technical, then you have to make sure that you have enough knowledge that can engage the attention of the visitors and they feel secure in the fact that your blogs are authentic and can be relied upon. Very soon, you will find that your blog establishes a reputation and you will have many visitors flocking to read it on a daily basis.

If you are not clear about the subject, you can do some research to find out what gets good attention and see whether you can contribute something in that direction.

Driving traffic to your blog and sustaining them

You need to first follow certain search engine optimization techniques that will enable a search engine to give your website a rank. Becoming aware of how a search engine ranks a particular website based on certain algorithms would be useful for you and you will find many articles on the internet that is devoted to this subject. Once your website gets a rank, you will find that you are able to attract visitors to your site and depending upon how interesting, informative and entertaining your blogs are, you will have regular traffic to your site. It is important to be regular with your updates and this way, your site gets accessed by the search engines like Google on a regular basis. Making sure that your site is known on some of the popular social networking sites is another way of publicizing your blog.

Blog monetization

Having created a great blog with a rank and getting visitors on a regular basis, it is now time to take advantage of this traffic and monetize your blog – which will be explained in subsequent articles.

You can find out more about blogs and blogging and exchange blogging tips and ideas with other webmasters at UK Webmaster Forum, the blog and blogging section can be found here.