What Is An RSS Feed?

by Tom Todd on December 5, 2011

You’ve undoubtedly seen the orange RSS feed icon on lots of websites but you may not be aware what it does.

What does RSS stand for?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.  That may sound a bit geeky to you, but it really is not that complicated.  MOST IMPORTANT… by offering your site visitors an opportunity to be notified of your new posts, you’ll get visitors coming back to your website.

Use An RSS feed so your visitors can receive your posts via RSS readers

RSS lets your site visitors sign up to receive your posts automatically in an RSS reader.  Just click on the orange RSS icon in my menu bar and look at all the RSS readers you can use to subscribe to my posts.  You’ll see the many reader programs you can choose from, including My Yahoo, My AOL, + Google, RSS Owl and many others.  You will also see the option to get posts delivered by email.

Another way that you can get your site visitors to subscribe to your posts in by adding a signup box to your WordPress sidebar.  You can see the one on my sidebar ‘Subscribe to the T2 Feed’.   This does the same thing as subscribing by email through the RSS icon in my menu bar.  However, this sign up box is a little less intimidating and clearly more intuitive. [Continue to WordPress post…]

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WordPress.com versus WordPress.org

by Tom Todd on November 29, 2011

It’s true, there are two types of WordPress, and yes this is confusing for anyone new to WordPress. The good news, I can quickly remove the confusion.

WordPress.com, is a hosted version of WordPress.org where you can start a blog in seconds without any technical knowledge. WordPress.com is free to use, but does have fees for some extra features. WordPress.com is a great way to go for personal blogging.

If you’re a business and need to create a website with a professional presence you’ll want to go with WordPress.org.

Here are the top five reasons most businesses go with WordPress.org: [Continue to WordPress post…]

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Using the Blank Canvas Theme – Thesis

by Tom Todd on November 20, 2011

If you want to build a website with your own design, Thesis theme (by DIYthemes) is a great blank canvas theme to use.  Following is a starter guide for getting the Thesis theme installed and customized.

How to install Thesis

If you haven’t already purchased the Thesis theme, just click here: The Thesis Theme for WordPress . You will download from the Thesis site to your computer in a zipped folder.

Next, go into your WordPress dashboard and go down the left dashboard menu to Appearances/Themes, then click on Themes. Next,click on Install Themes which is at the top of the page. Now click on Upload which is located just below the tabs at the top of the page. Find the Thesis zipped folder and upload it. Once it’s upload you will be asked if you want to activated, and you do. Now, click back over to the tab on your browser that shows the page that the rest of the world will eventually see. You should now see a simple formatted Thesis theme shell.

Customizing Your Blog with Thesis Theme

IMPORTANT NOTE: As you make changes within the Thesis Site Options and Design Options, click on the Big Ass Save Button often. You never know when your internet connection may be lost.  And, yes… the Thesis people have a sense-of-humor, there really is a Big Ass Save Button (see photo below!)

Setting The Layout

Now that you have Thesis installed, it’s time to setup the default layout, meaning the page width, the number of sidebars, the width of the sidebars. To do this, go down the dashboard menu and click on Thesis/Design Options. In the upper left corner you see Site Layout, click on Columns, the first menu item below Site Layout. The first step here is to decide how many columns you want to appear on the pages or posts that will have columns. 3 column means two widgets columns plus a content column.

Once you selected the number of columns, then you plugin how wide (in pixels you want your content area and how wide you want your widget columns (or sidebars).

Next, you select the column order by clicking on the Column Order section. If you have picked a 3 column layout, you can see there are three layout options.

The next option down is the HTML framework. The default setting is Page Framework. The Full-Width-Framework will allow you to build a page that takes up the entire width of all monitors.

Below this you’ll see a cool feature, it the Outer Page Padding. This will add white space around your pages, which will surround the header, navigation bar, content section and footer.

Now jump over to the dashboard menu and click on Header Image. This is the place to check how wide of a page you’ve actually created. Pages are sites created today are generally between 960 pixels and 1050 pixels wide. The average page width has grown over the years as monitors and laptops have gotten wider. [Continue to WordPress post…]

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