This book is meant to be a guide to building an optimized foundation in the Social Web for beginners and advanced users alike.

Chapter 4 of the book is about building a Website using WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS). (As an immediate example, SocialMedia.biz is a site powered by WordPress.).

The following excerpts are from A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization:

Chapter 4: Building a WordPress Powered Website

The Anatomy Of A WordPress Site

Let’s look at the main elements of a WordPress site. Each of the examples in this chapter has these general areas, just represented a little differently. …

The Header
The header area is where the main header image is located, along with the title and tag line of the blog site. It is also where the navigation menu is typically located, if the theme has one.

The header can be as simple as the blog title and description (www.empoweredbywordpress.com), composed of a custom header image (www.puresoapbox.com), or a combination of both (www.plumbsocial.com).

The header is usually the first element you want to customize to suit your own needs. For instance, you could easily replace the entire header with your own image and/or logo of the same dimensions. This is explained in greater detail when we discuss choosing themes and customizing.

Navigation Menu
The navigation menu is usually part of the header of the site, but is optional. A site without main navigation in the header may include the navigation as part of the sidebar elements.

The Main Body Area
This is the area where the actual blog entries reside. WordPress refers to this as the “content area.” You can easily customize the content area by changing how many blog entries display on a page or whether you want to cut the entries short with a “read more” option, and many other ways.

Beginning with version 2.1 of WordPress, you have the option of having either a static home page as your front page (www.daltonpublishing.com), or your blog entries as the front page (www.ricwilliams.com). If you choose a static home page, your blog will become another page that you would add to your navigation menu as opposed to the home page. The content area is usually located in the middle of the site, but could also be off to the side or on the top.

The Sidebars
The columns on either side of the content area (or below in some cases) are called “sidebars.” They hold many of the other elements of your site, such as links, categories, search tools, recent blog entries, archived entries, photos, video streams, RSS feeds, widgets, badges, advertisements, etc. Sidebars are also where you implement many of the plugins you add to the site.

Typically, sidebars are on either side of the content area. Many themes get more creative with their placement. For example, the Empowered By WordPress site has three sidebars: one on the left of the content area and two to the right. The Social Media Power site has one wide sidebar on the top of the left area of the site and two smaller sidebars underneath the wider one. A third option is three sidebars under the content area, like on the Dalton Publishing site.

The Footer
This is the area of the site where credit is given. Do not remove the credit to WordPress or to the theme designer from the footer of a WordPress site. There are a lot of people who have donated their time to this free, open source project, and it is never good form not to give them due credit. You should place your own copyright statement in the footer as well.

Sidebar Widgets
Sidebar widgets are the different elements or modules you can place on your sidebars. You can have as many of these widgets as you like and can arrange them however you choose.

Each widget performs a specific function. For example, on the left sidebar of Les McGehee’s Website, the widgets are:

• “Navigation” which lists all of the pages on the site.
• “About Les” and “Les Recommends” which are lists of external links.
• On the right sidebars the widgets are:
• “More Les Events” – a widget from the social calendar Upcoming.org
• that lists his upcoming events.
• “More Les News” – a widget from the newsletter generator Constant
• Contact that allows users to subscribe to his newsletter.
• “Buy Les’s Book” – a widget that can be used to purchase his book
• using his Paypal account.
• “Les on Flickr” – a Flickr widget that displays his photos in a little flash
• “badge.”

WordPress comes with a number of standard widgets that perform functions specific to the functionality of your WordPress site, such as listing blog categories, search features, recent posts, tag clouds, etc.

You can create your own custom widgets easily by placing text or HTML/Java code in what is called a “text” widget. This is how you create most of the widgets and badges you accumulate from the Social Web.

Some custom widgets in our examples include:

• The Flickr badge on Les McGehee’s site
• The buy-now buttons for books on Ric Williams’ and Les McGehee’s Websites.
• The widgets for sharing on social bookmarking sites on the Dalton Publishing site.
• The widgets feeding in blog entries from other sites as on the Plumb Social homepage.

Static Pages
Static pages are the pages of a WordPress site that do not contain blog entries. You can link to these pages from the navigation menu. The home pages of the Dalton Publishing site and the Social Media Power site demonstrate static pages. You can have as many pages as you like on your site and it is easy to add and populate them.

Copyright 2009 by Deltina Hay. All rights reserved.

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This chapter also includes information about installing WordPress as a CMS, FTP access, the WordPress dashboard, planning your site, plugins, themes, and much more. The resource CD offers further reading, linkable resources, and a fillable PDF form called “Planning Your WordPress Website, with Diagrams” that you can use to map out your site.

Read more about this social media book at the publisher’s site.

As always, Socialmedia.biz readers also get a special price of $16 (shipping included — retail $24.95) for this book – just click the buy now button.

Previously

• Survival Guide Chapter 3 Overview
• Survival Guide Chapter 2 Overview
• Survival Guide Chapter 1 Overview

The post Survival Guide Chapter 4: Building a WordPress-powered website appeared first on Inside Social Media.

This book is meant to be a guide to building an optimized foundation in the Social Web for beginners and advanced users alike.

Chapter 3, the longest chapter in the book, is about RSS feeds and blogs. This chapter is packed with information and useful tips about content preparation, feed readers, optimization, and much more to ensure maximum exposure in the Social Web.

The following excerpts are from A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization:

Chapter 3: RSS Feeds and Blogs

Optimizing Your Blog And RSS Feed

Your RSS feed or blog will do you little good if nobody knows about it or cannot subscribe to it. This section highlights ways for you to optimize and promote your feed. Most of these tips are for both blogs and RSS
feeds, but some of them only apply to blogs. It is made clear if something only applies to blogs….

Your Feed or Blog Content

Edit Your Content
Edit and proofread your feed or blog entries for accuracy every time you post. If you or your staff do not have the time or skills to do so, consider hiring a professional editor. If you write your posts ahead of time as suggested in the previous section, you can save money since editors usually have a minimum charge and can get a lot done in one session.

Titles
Always use at least one or two of your best key terms in your blog or feed titles. This gives you better placement in the directories as well as better search engine placement.

Categories and Tags (tags only apply to blogs)
When posting blog entries, you should assign categories and tags to them every time. Most blog indexing sites use categories and tags to index blog entries. Draw from your top level key terms for categories and all of your key terms for tags.

Links
Link to as many other blogs or Websites from within each of your posts as you can and trackback to them whenever possible. When creating links within a post, use key terms as the link text. For example, link “Facebook” to Facebook.com, link “Facebook application” to the Facebook application page, Facebook.com/apps, and so forth.

Each link in the post also contains a key term that is used as a tag and/or category for the post. This tactic gives each of your posts more relevance in directories and search engines.

Signatures
Attaching a signature at the end of each of your posts can encourage visitors to subscribe to your feed and aid in promoting your other sites or products. This is also a good place for a copyright statement if you need one. It is best to keep your signature clearly separate from the post content. One way to do this is to include three pound signs before the signature.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO For Your Blog (only applies to blogs)
Since WordPress produces PHP as opposed to HTML, posts and pages do not necessarily have the metadata in their source that is required for search engine robots. However, there are ways around this problem. A good SEO plugin for WordPress is The All in One SEO Pack. This plugin lets you assign proper metadata to
each of your posts and WordPress pages so that they get good placement in search engines. You input the metadata from the same interface that you enter the post. The title, description, and keywords entered here
become the metadata for that post.

This plugin also helps you assign metadata for your site as whole.

Permalinks (only applies to blogs)

As discussed in the previous section, permalinks are the direct link to each of your blog entries. You want to use a permalink structure that does not use any special characters (these are often called “pretty” permalinks). Since WordPress is written using PHP, the default permalinks look something like this: http://yoursite.com/?p=6. Search engines often ignore links that contain characters like the ones in “?p=6.” Choose a permalink structure that does not use them. To change the structure, go to the backend of WordPress; go to Settings/Permalinks. To make your permalinks “pretty,” choose any of the options except the default.

External Links or “Link Baiting”

This is actually an SEO tip you can use for any Website. Use meta keywords in any link text that points back to your Website. These are the meta keywords that are in your site’s header, not just arbitrary key terms. Whenever you can use text as links back to your site, use these terms to do so. As an example, we use the following blurb at the end of each article we submit to e-zines and the like for Social Media Power:

Deltina Hay is the principal of Social Media Power, a Web 2.0 development firm in Austin. Ms. Hay’s graduate education in computer science, applied mathematics, and psychology led her naturally to social media consulting. Find out more about using social media and Web 2.0 tools from her new straight forward, easy-to-follow e-book on social media marketing and Web 2.0.

The term “social media” links to SocialMediaPower.com and “social media marketing” links to the e-book page on that site. We are also careful not to clutter these bios with links—two is a good limit. Search engine robots consider external links that are similar to meta keywords very relevant and will increase your page rank accordingly.

Copyright 2009 by Deltina Hay. All rights reserved.

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This chapter also includes information about RSS feed and blog promotion using FeedBurner and other RSS Feed and blog directories. The resource CD offers further reading, linkable resources, and seven fillable PDF forms that you can use to prepare and organize your content.

Read more about this social media book at the publisher’s site.

As always, Socialmedia.biz readers also get a special price of $16 (shipping included — retail $24.95) for this book – just click the buy now button.

Previously

• Survival Guide Chapter 2 Overview
• Survival Guide Chapter 1 Overview

The post Survival Guide Chapter 3: RSS feeds & blogs appeared first on Inside Social Media.