Mike

Setting Up Your Site

I'm going to assume that you know how to use FTP clients and setup your hosting accounts. If you don't, then stop reading and go learn how.

I like Filezilla (free) but it doesn't work with Vista 64bit so I use Smart FTP (paid).

Really quick tutorial on installing Wordpress and plugins:

1. Before installing anything, create a new MySQL database and user. Add the user to the database and give that use full permissions.
2. Open the wp-config-sample.php file with a text editor like Notepad, Notepad ++ or Textpad and edit the fields for user, database and password. Save as wp-config.php
3. Upload all files to your server
4. Change the file / folder permissions on the WP Content folder to 777 and make it recursive, meaning you want that folder and everything under it to have the same permissions (777)
5. Change the permissions on your .htaccess file to 777 as well. If you don't have a .htaccess file create one by opening a blank text file with Notepad and saving the blank file as “.htaccess”. Include the quotes if you have Save As .txt File chosen, or change it to All Files and drop the quotes. Upload the blank file to your site's root (/public_html or /www depending on if you have cPanel or Plesk) and change permissions as stated above.
6. Next, navigate to your site. Assuming you created the wp-config.php file correctly and it can connect to the MySQL database, you'll be able to enter the name of you site and email address here. Then once you click Continue, you'll get your WP admin login information. Save this somewhere. Roboform – Password Manager, Form Filler, Password Management | RoboForm – is a great way to save passwords securely. I've been using Roboform since 2004 and it still rocks! Recently I purchased an Ironkey, but it doesn't hold a candle to Roboform for password management.
7. You're done, login and let's get dirty.

It's Time To Create The Site!

Now that you have Wordpress installed and configured, it's time to login and start playing with the bubble wrap. To begin, go to your settings and change whatever you feel is necessary. Here's the list of what I like to change:

• General Settings
  • Tagline – Make it descriptive and include your primary keyword(s)
  • Wordpress Address – I just add “www” to the URL
  • Blog Address – same as WP address
• Skip Writing and Reading
• Discussion Settings
  • Uncheck the “Email Me Whenever” boxes
  • Check “An administrator must always approve...” this works better than Askimet or any other spam tool out there.
  • Uncheck “Comment author must have a previously approved comment” otherwise a spammer just has to make one benign comment to get everything else through
• Skip Media and Privacy
• Under Permalinks I change it to /%category%/%postname%/ and save. If your .htaccess file isn't writeable (666 or 777) then you'll have to copy the code given and upload it yourself.
• Skip Misc.

Let's turn on some plugins and start configuring those.

Auction2Post Plugin

I'm not going to cover the configuration of A2P since Radio has that handled quite well in his forum. So, I'll skip this, but don't forget to turn it on now.

A2P Support

WP Auto Tagger and Short Post URLs Plugins

Just click activate and you're done. Next!!

WP Super Cache

This one is not entirely necessary, but it can save you a call from your host if you have a lot of Wordpress sites running. One downfall of Wordpress is it's very processor intensive. Everytime someone loads a page it has to parse the PHP script to present the page to the visitor. If you have a lot of visitors, this can really put a strain on the processor. So, the answer to that is to use WP Super Cache and cache the pages. That way when a visitor arrives they are shown a cached version of the page instead of forcing the server to parse the PHP again. Also, if you have a lot of low traffic Wordpress sites, that can have the same effect as one high traffic site.

Moral of the story: install and use WP Super Cache on all your Wordpress installations.

WP Super Cache is relatively simple to install and configure. You will need to make sure that your .htaccess file is writeable (666 or 777) and your wp-config.php file (just long enough to configure WP Super Cache, then change it back to 644).

After you click Activate, you'll get this message at the top of the page:

WP Super Cache is disabled. Please go to the plugin admin page to enable caching.

So, click on the link (not here, in your Wordpress installation), once you do this, you may get a message that it could not write to the wp-config.php file. If this happens, change your wp-config.php file's permissions to 666, then refresh the page.

Now you should be able to turn it on. Do it now. Then scroll down the page and click “Update Status”. Next, scroll down more and under the Mod Rewrite Rules box, click the Update button there as well.

Done with WP Super Cache. Change your wp-config.php file permissions back to 644.

PS. Ignore the warning at the top of the WP Super Cache page:
I know it's writeable, I made it writeable and it's going to stay writeable. Sheez.

Amazon Machine Tags

Actually, Radio posted a good post on adding Amazon Machine Tags to your A2P site, so I'm not going to rehash it. I will quote it here though for those that missed it:
http://www.wickedfire.com/sell-buy-t...tml#post610528
more to come...

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