Blog Archives

How to Install WordPress Plugins

In Step #4 of the tutorial I highlight some of the ways that you can utilize plugins as part of your blog. Plugins can make any blogger’s life easier, and they might even offer you some new functionality that you were unaware of. Now I’ll show you how to actually go about installing these useful tools!

There are two main ways that you can install WordPress plugins onto your blog, and I will review both of them in the tutorial below.

Option #1: Search for Plugins via the WordPress Dashboard

The most straightforward way of finding and downloading plugins is to simply search for them via your WordPress dashboard. Best of all, every plugin listed in this area is completely free. In the screenshot below, you’ll see where to click on the left: first on “Plugins” and then on the “Add New” button.

In the upper right you will see the Keyword search bar that will allow you to search for plugins. Now let’s do a sample search!

In this search I looked for plugins having to do with “Fonts.” You can see there are a number of options available to me, and I typically recommend focusing on the plugins that have a strong overall rating and a large number of active installs. This shows you that other bloggers out there are using these plugins and finding them helpful. I’ve circled where this information appears so that you know exactly where to look.

Option #2: Upload a Plugin Zip File on the WordPress Dashboard

Plugins that are not free need to be uploaded to your site in a different way. Once you pay for one of these plugins, you should receive a .ZIP file. You will then be able to upload the plugin manually by clicking “Plugins” and then “Add New” followed by the “Upload Plugin” button. You can see an example below:

Once you manually upload the .ZIP file, you will be to activate the plugin as normal.

And there you have it – all the steps you need to follow to start taking advantage of the many amazing WordPress plugins available out there for your own blog.

How to Add a Video to Your Blog

In Step #3 of the tutorial I show you how to easily add an image to a WordPress post (or page). But what if you want to add a video?

This is really easy to do as well, but the process is a bit different. Adding a video to a post is known as “embedding” a video. For the purposes of this tutorial I am going to show you how to embed a YouTube video in your WordPress blog, but the process is similar for other videos as well (Vimeo, Facebook videos, etc.).

Option #1: The Easy Way

The easiest way to add a YouTube video is to simply copy and paste the URL of the video into the blog post editor.

First, you will need to login to your WordPress dashboard and either create a new post or edit an existing one. Once you are on the post editor screen make sure the “Visual” tab on the top right is selected (circled in the image below).

Then you just need to find the video that you want to embed and copy the URL from your address bar. It should look something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDZ7xhArTr4

When you do that, the video should appear in your post editor screen immediately. Just click “Publish” and the video will be added to your post!

Option #2: The Personalized Way

While the first option is very easy to use, it doesn’t let you customize the way the video is embedded into your post.

To have access to the customization options we need use a slightly different process. We need to get the “embed code” for the video instead of the URL. To do that, go to the YouTube video you want to embed and click on the “Share” button below the video.

Then you are going to want to click “Embed” and copy the link.

Then you need to go to the post editor of your blog and click the “Text” tab at the top right.

You are then going to paste this link into the text editor of your WordPress blog post. It should look something like this:

In that code that are attributes called “width” and “height”. You can change those numbers to resize the video. For example, width=”280″ height=”157″

If you want to add a border around the video you can do that by changing the number next to “frameborder” in the code.

If you want to make your video centered you will need to do a little HTML coding. Before the embed code add this:

And after the embed code add this:

</p>

When you’re done it will look something like this:

That’s it! Two ways to add a video to your blog post!

How to Move Your Site from Joomla to WordPress

Although Joomla is a highly sophisticated and popular content management system designed to power a blog or website of almost any type, it is certainly not for everyone. If you are among those who have decided to make the switch from Joomla to a WordPress website or WordPress blog, the latter powering almost a quarter of the world’s websites, the process is fairly straightforward thanks to the availability of plugins that can help you. Before you get started, you will need to choose a hosting company and install WordPress. For best results, go for a hosting company that provides a simple one-click installation for WordPress, which make install about a simple as using a website builder.

1 – Install the FG Joomla to WordPress Plugin

Although there are a number of plugins available for WordPress that greatly simplify the process of migrating from Joomla, we’ll be using the popular FG Joomla to WordPress plugin for the purposes of this tutorial.

Navigate to “Tools > Plugins” in your WordPress administrator dashboard, and enter the plugin referred to above in the search field.
Click on “Install Now,” click “OK” to confirm, and click “Activate Plugin” once the download and installation is complete.

2 – Import Your Content from Joomla

Now that you have installed the plugin, a new option will appear in the import settings in your administrator dashboard. By using this plugin, you will be able to import categories, posts, images and attachments from your Joomla database into your WordPress one.

Navigate to “Tools > Import,” and click on the Joomla FG option from the list of import options. The Joomla import page will open.
Go to the administrator section of your Joomla website, and note down the database settings, or keep the page open alongside your WordPress administrator dashboard for reference.
Enter the database parameters, including the hostname, port, database, username, password and table prefix back in your WordPress administrator dashboard.
Check the box beside “Force media import” if you want to transfer images from your Joomla website as well.
Click “Import content from Joomla to WordPress” to continue. The process may take some time, depending on the amount of content on your Joomla website.
Click on “Modify internal links” once the migration is complete. You should skip this step only if do not have any internal links in your Joomla website pointing to other pages on the website.

There is also a premium version of FG Joomla for those who need to import additional content, such as that from outdated versions of the CMS, contact directory contacts and Virtuemart e-commerce content.

Featured Blog: Running in Lavender

Are you interested in starting a blog, but not sure if it’s for you?

Today I want to showcase one of the hard-working bloggers who started her own blog with the help of The Blog Starter guide. Hopefully this will give you a better idea of what a blog created with the help of The Blog Starter can become, and give you some insight into the mind of a successful blogger.

This will be a recurring feature, so be on the lookout for more featured blogs soon!

Please introduce yourself and tell us about your blog.

I’m Heledd (Welsh – in case you were wondering) or simply H to my friends. Having worked in Digital Marketing for over ten years, I decided to take a career break to look after my two young daughters and start a blog! I live in a beautiful village in Surrey, England, with my husband and of course our beautiful girls.

My blog Running in Lavender is a place where I share special moments, ideas, inspirations, recommendations and basically ramble on about the things in life that make me happy. It’s primarily a family lifestyle blog with some beauty, fashion, travel and “mummy” bits thrown in for good measure – along with lots and lots of pictures!

What motivated you to start your blog?

Becoming a SAHM (stay-at-home mom) after being so career focused for many years was always going to be difficult for me. I decided to start my blog so that I still had something to keep my mind working, something for ‘me’. I enjoy writing, taking pictures and I love social media so blogging felt like a natural choice.

How difficult or easy was it to get your blog started? Any particular
challenges?

Following your guidance (and lots of help from YouTube) I found the process of setting up my blog very easy.

What would you say to someone who wants to start a blog, but thinks it
will be too difficult?

All I can say is that it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. I get so much pleasure and enjoyment out of my blog. I’ve never done anything like this before (setting up a website) but I found it all very easy.

What are your future plans for your blog?

My plan is to focus more on fashion, beauty and travel posts and grow the blog as much as possible. I also plan to start vlogging soon.

Make sure to check out what Heledd is up to on her blog!

How to Transfer Your WordPress.org Blog to a New Domain

This guide will show you how to move your self-hosted WordPress blog to a new domain. If you are looking to move your WordPress.com blog to a self-hosted installation use this guide instead.

Moving your self-hosted WordPress.org blog to a different domain needn’t be a complicated or particularly time-consuming task, but there are some important considerations to take into account before you start. Most importantly, the process of changing over to a new domain will have a significant effect on your standings in the search engines, since it will take time for them to adjust to the change. As a result, you will inevitably see a drop in traffic during the first few weeks. In this article, we’ll take a look at the steps required to move your WordPress blog to a new domain, keeping SEO intact in the process.

1 – Back Up Your WordPress Database

Since you won’t want to be taking any unnecessary risks during the move, it is essential that you take a few extra steps to back up your WordPress database, since it contains all of your content including posts and comments. The easiest and fastest way to back up your database is to use a free plugin such as WP-DB-Backup, which we will be using for the purpose of this tutorial.

1. Navigate to “Plugins > Add New,” and search for “WP-DB-Backup”. Click “Install Now” and activate the plugin once installation is complete.
2. Navigate to “Tools > Backup,” and select the option “Download to your computer” before clicking “Backup Now”.

For future reference, you can also use this tool to schedule automatic backups and have them downloaded to your computer, emailed to you or saved to a remote server such as your Web hosting FTP server.

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2 – Export and Import Your Content

Assuming you already have your new domain set up with WordPress installed, you will now be ready to export your content and import it into the new website. To make things easier, WordPress provides a built-in export tool.

1. Navigate to “Tools > Export,” and select “All content” before clicking “Download Export File”.
2. Go to the administrator dashboard of your new WordPress site and navigate to “Tools > Import”. Select the “WordPress” option at the bottom of the list, and upload the export file you just downloaded. Click “Upload file and import,” and your content will appear on your new website.

All of your posts and pages should now appear on your new WordPress site. However, you’ll also need to migrate any additional content such as images and other uploads, and you will need to re-download any plugins and themes and reconfigure them.
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3 – Migrate Your WordPress Uploads

The easiest and most practical way to get all of your WordPress uploads onto your new site is to manually transfer them using an FTP client such as FileZilla. Your hosting company will probably also provide a Web-based client, or you can use the File Explorer in Windows 8.

1. Log into the FTP server of your old WordPress site, and navigate to “wp-content/uploads”.
2. Download the entire folder, and copy it over to the corresponding directory of your new WordPress site, overwriting any files as prompted. Alternatively, you’ll need to merge the folders without overwriting any files if you want to preserve any previous uploads on your new site.

4 – Restoring Your Themes and Plugins

Although all of your content and uploads will now be available on the new site, any customization will need to be done again. You can use the paid plugin “BackupBuddy” to do this for you if you prefer.

1. Reinstall and reconfigure your theme. If you have modified any code in the theme, you’ll likely be best off copying over the files manually from the FTP server on your old site. You will find your themes in the “wordpress\wp-content\themes” directory.
2. Reinstall and reconfigure any plugins and widgets that you want. The easiest method is to have both your old and new WordPress sites open beside each other and manually go through the settings one-by-one.

Your new WordPress site should now be looking much like your old one, although there are a few other important considerations. You may need to update any internal links on your new site so that they refer to the new domain, and you can use a plugin such as “Pretty Link” to automate this process. You’ll also need to update any RSS feeds and set up a 301 redirect so that people, as well as the search engine crawlers, will be automatically redirected to your new domain. Finally, don’t forget to submit a new XML sitemap to Google, and be sure to thoroughly test your new WordPress site.

How to Move Your Blog from Blogger to WordPress

Google’s blog publishing service, Blogger, is a popular content management system for casual bloggers, but it doesn’t provide nearly as many features and the degree of versatility that a self-hosted WordPress site does. Powering almost a quarter of all websites, self-hosted WordPress blogs come with a vast database of themes and plugins as well as the ability to make more advanced changes to the inner workings of your site. If you have decided that it’s time to make the move from Blogger to WordPress, you will first need to register a domain and install WordPress. Then you can use the one-click import option in the WordPress platform to transfer all of your posts and reader comments with ease. In this guide, we’ll take a look at how to use the feature and transfer your content over in a matter of minutes.

1 – Exporting Your Content into WordPress

The first step involves copying over all of your content, including your images and links, from your Blogger website into your new self-hosted WordPress site.

Navigate to “Tools > Import” in the administrator dashboard of your self-hosted WordPress blog.
Click “Blogger” in the list of options, and click “Install Now” in the bottom-right corner of the pop-up window.
Click “Activate Plugin and Run Importer” once the plugin has been downloaded and installed.
Click “Authorize” to give WordPress permission to access your Blogger website. You will be transferred to your Google account.
Click “Allow access,” and you will be taken to a new page where you can access and manage your Blogger posts, comments, links and images.
Click “Set Authors” once the content has been imported from Blogger, and assign your author name to the imported posts.

2 – Set up Your Permalinks

To help maintain any search engine optimization work you did on your Blogger website, you should change your permalink setup so that it matches as closely as possible to that of your old website.

Navigate to “Settings > Permalinks” in your WordPress site to view a list of options for your permalinks structure.
Choose “Month and name” from the list of options, since this most closely matches the structure used on a Blogger website.

3 – Set up a Redirect

One of the most important steps is to set up a redirect so that visitors to your Blogger website will be automatically redirected to your WordPress blog. The easiest way to set up a 301 redirect is to use a plugin, such as “SEO Blogger to WordPress “.

Navigate to the “Plugins > Add New” page in your WordPress administrator dashboard, and search for the plugin referred to above.
Click “Install Now,” confirm the installation, and click “Activate Plugin” once the process is complete.
Navigate to “Tools > SEO Blogger to WordPress,” and click “Generate” to create a template for copying to your Blogger website.
Navigate to “Design > Layout > Edit HTML” in your Blogger dashboard, and switch to the Classic Template.
Copy and paste the generated code provided by the plugin into the text area in your Blogger dashboard and click “Save.”