Setting Up Your New Freelance Site
- Login to your new account.
- Change your password to something memorable. (Users > Your Profile > bottom right)
- While you are on this page you might also like to turn off “Use the Visual Editor when writing.” The visual editor is unnecessarily slow and is only for formating content. The non-visual editor provides enough formating control on its own through a simple “select and click” operation. For instance, once you have written your post, select a string of text by clicking and dragging your cursor through the words, then select the ‘b’ button. Your text will be encoded with the bold command.
- Add categories to your site. Every new account has one category automatically enabled. The category name is ‘uncategorized’ - which does nothing for your search engine listings. Although you can add, edit, update or delete categories at any time, let’s get it right from the start. (Manage > Categories > under ‘Action’ on the right, click Edit). Change the category name to something worthy (i.e. ‘Writing’ if you are a freelance writer, ‘ASP’ if ASP is one of your programming languages, etc.) You might also like to write a short description of your category. Click the Edit Category button to save your changes.
- Your first post. Your new site came with one standard post. You can edit, delete, or ignore it. I suggest editing and renaming it. Here’s why - every day hundreds of new blogs are created on WordPress enabled websites. Every day hundreds of new posts are automatically created with the url of ‘hello-world’. Leaving this post and it’s naming convention are a big red flag that the site owner doesn’t have a clue about what is being added to his/her website or how to control the posts. Let’s not be a red flag. (Manage > Posts > on right hand side, click Edit). Rewrite that post to something interesting (or at least different!) and before you click the ‘Save’ button below the post, look over on the right sidebar for the ‘post slug’. You will see it says ‘hello-world’ - type something new in there and then click the Save button. Also notice the top of the right sidebar under Categories. There you will see the work you did in step 4 (above).
- Pretty, search engine friendly, URLs. Right now, everytime you add a post to your freelancing website your urls will include the month and day and post slug. You can leave this if you like, but I always change it as I like short urls. To change your urls: (Options > Permalinks > click the Custom button and in the space provided - to the right - type in /%postname%/. While you’re here you might as well set up your permalinks for tags (more on tags below), so at the bottom of the page under Optional enter /tag/ into the Tag base field.
- Tags for your site. Tags help people find content on your site as well as the search engines and social bookmarking websites to organize your content. The best plugin found to date for tags is the Ultimate Tag Warrior and it is included for you to use, but first you must turn it on. (Plugins > Ultimate Tag Warrior > Activate). Now that you have this option turned on there are a few nice features to help you with search engines and your visitors. First, you will need to include your tags within your posts (more about this in step xxx) but allow me to show you where to control the way they are displayed on your new site. (Options > Tags) Turn on url rewriting, the base url field should say /tag/, turn on meta keywords, and include local tag links in feeds. All the rest can be ignored unless you feel like playing with these options later. At the very bottom of this page is a helpful feature when you’re writing posts. “Show existing tags on post editing page.” - choose tag list or drop down and then click the Save button.
- Fight comment spam. Spam is a terrible thing and at World Wide Freelancer it is frowned upon to allow it. It will divert your website visitors and wastes bandwidth. It is best if you have comments set to “An administrator must always approve the comment. (Options > Discussion)
- Customize Your Sidebar. Your new site is what we call ‘widget-enabled’. This basically means that any content you would like to have in your right sidebar is controlled through a variety of drag and drop items available through your Admin area. (Presentation > Widgets). You can add custom text, links to other websites, a list of your recent posts or visitor comments, a search field, tag cloud, or bring an RSS feed from another website into your site. Drag the widgets name from mid-page into the Right Sidebar box, make any customizations or alterations you like by clicking on the icon beside each widget, and click the Save Changes button.
- Your About Box. On your home page is a standard blurb that you can edit at any time. (Presentation > WWFreelancer Options). In the about box field add your ‘blurb’ and below that enter any ‘page slug’ name if you want your visitors to click a link to find out more. Click the Save Changes button.
- Your “About” page has already been set up for you, but you must edit it to include your content. This is a perfect page to insert your resume and link to it from the “read more” link in step 10. The page slug for your about page is /about/. To edit the about page: Manage > Pages > Edit.
World Wide Freelancer invites you to discover more of the features within your Administration dashboard. The top 11 points are considered critical to your success, but you can do much more with your new freelancing website through other features which we’ll cover in later posts.
If you have any questions about WordPress, freelancing, or posting to your new site, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below.
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