It also helps distinguish your site in your browsers bookmarks and is also used in some social bookmarking sites as well. Here’s how you can easily create the file and make it show up on your website.

1. Find an image on your computer that will work very small. It should be square and can be a gif, jpg, png, or bmp file. It can have transparency as well. It does not need to be a large file as it will be reduced to 16×16 pixels in size.

2. Visit http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon (new window) and press the Browse button.

You could also try this free tool that makes a favicon from your Twitter profile image. http://www.html-kit.com/favicon (new window)

3. Navigate to the image on your computer and press Open.

4. Click the Create Icon button on the dynamic drive website.

5. In a moment you will see a preview of your icon. If you are happy with the way it looks, press the Download Favicon button.

This will download a file called favicon.ico on to your computer.

6. Login to your WordPress website.

7. Click on the Media tab and select Add New.

8. Press the Select Files button, navigate to the favicon.ico file on your computer and press Select. WordPress will automatically upload the file.

9. When it is finished you will see a small image of the file and down the bottom we are looking for the File URL section. Copy this URL.

10. Click on your Appearance tab and select Editor. Find the theme files section on the left and click on the one that says, Header (header.php).

11. Paste this code below the <link rel=”pingback” href=”/xmlrpc.php” /> line and replace the href URL with the full file path to the icon file we uploaded previously.

<link rel=”shortcut icon” type=”image/x-icon” href=”http://yourwebsite.com/uploadspath/favicon.ico“>

12. Click the Update File button.

You will need to refresh your website page to see the favicon in action. Even then it may not work straight away. The easiest way I have found to test that all is working is to use a different browser to load your page fresh.

If all is done right you should be sporting a spanking new tiny favicon. Yay!

Bookmark Favicons

Take the time and follow this guide step-by-step and WordPress will be only 2 clicks away!

First you need to make sure that all the following elements are downloaded and functional. (links open in a new window)

Downloads:

1. Firefox – make sure that first you are using the very latest version of the Browser (3.0.7 19th March 09). Mozilla often release security updates that you should allow.
2. Secure Login Add-on – This Firefox extension makes logging in to websites a simple matter of clicking once.

Click to Enlarge

Security Note: This add-on makes it very easy to login to any sites that Firefox has stored passwords for. This extension is not recommended on a public computer.

If you have a private machine but want an extra degree of security you can designate a master password by going to (on a Mac ) Firefox > Preferences > Security > Use a Master Password. Make sure you remember this!

Once you have updated your browser and have the Secure Login addon installed we need to put our WordPress links on our Firefox toolbar for quick access.

1. Open the email you would have received when you installed WordPress that contains your account login details. it will look something like this:
2. Click on the Admin URL link.  This is the link that contains /wp-admin/.
3. Enter your username and password. Allow Firefox to remember it.
4. Once you are successfully logged in, drag the URL in the top of your browser onto your toolbar (assuming you have space – you may need to create it)
5. You can right-click on the link in the toolbar and choose Properties to customize the name that appears.

Now next time you want to login to your WordPress website, all you need to do is click this new link, then click the Key icon (when it lights up) and voila, you’re in!

WordPress Screencast Tutorial

This short video Screencast will show you how to upload plugins (or anything for that matter) using Cpanel.

Cpanel is a very common admin backend system that comes with most hosting packages.

In this case we want to upload and install the WP-Easy Uploader plugin. This one plugin gives us the ability to upload anythign to our WordPress blog. Plugins, Themes and anything in fact.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-easy-uploader/

This one plugin allows you to upload and install many other plugins and themes from within the WordPress admin interface. Very cool!

Geeks basically, that make really cool new features available by creating little applications that run within the structure of WordPress.

Hot Tip: Find new plugins and themes fast! Try our new Google WordPress search engine page.

Want to add video from YouTube and Quicktime movies to your site? Try the Vipers Video quicktags Plugin. Maybe you want to make sure the email addresses you display on your page can’t be harvested by spam bots. Go for the DBD EMail encoder.

This 5 minute screencast will show you the most elegant expedient way to try out new plugins on your site.

Keep in mind that some (not many) of these plugins require some coding experience too.

2 Plugins feature in this Screencast:

• WP-Easy Uploader – allows you to upload anything to your WordPress web space, try out plugins or themes and upload media.
• Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu – gives you the quick drop down menus for WordPress 2.6.5 and earlier.

Installing a new plugin goes as follows:

1. Find the plugin you are after by using our Google WordPress search engines on this site. Go to http://effectiveclassywebsites.com/wordpress-search/
2. Find the download link on the WordPress.org website.
3. Right-Click on this link and choose Copy Link Location (in Firefox). This will copy the url to the plugin file to your memory.
4. Go to your WordPress Dashboard and select Manage > Upload Files.
5. Paste into the From URL field by Right-Clicking and choose Paste.
6. In destination, choose plugin. Options can generally be left alone.
7. Press Upload!
8. Go to the plugins page and activate your new plugin.
9. Make any settings and options changes you need to operate the plugin.

Grab the full quicktime downloads of the latest version of WordPress Screencasts. Subscribe to our free newsletter now. (look up!)

This video training shows you how to create and edit sidebar widgets in your self hosted WordPress website. A summary of which is as follows:

Open 3 Tabs in Firefox

1. Your home page or WordPress front-end.
2. Design > Widgets and
3. Write > Post

Having these 3 tabs open at the same time allows you to switch between them, and refresh the pages you’ve changed. Remember, WordPress is a dynamic system and when you press Save changes are instant, BUT you have to reload the page to see them.

The exception to this is if you have a caching plugin installed that stores html pages on your site for extra speed. If this is the case you will have to turn this function off before trying to refresh a page.

The new post is used as a way to edit or create the code we need to paste into the text (HTML) widget in the second tab. We will not actually be publishing a post. This allows us to edit in a visual environment rather than a code or geek way.

NOTE: If you have more than one sidebar you will need to select the correct one from the Current Widgets selector and press Show.

Every time you create an article or page it is an opportunity to:

• Create value for your readers and/or customers.
• Reinforce the keywords that target your topic or media.
• Create a stronger presence in the blog and search engines for higher visibility online.

Keep in mind that search engine optimization is just one way that you can attract the right people to your post, page or offer. There are more active ways to bring people to your website but in this article I will cover the basics of SEO within WordPress.

Before we get into the WordPress specific steps there is one thing you must create:

A well presented article or media that provides some real value or entertainment to your visitor.

Its surprising how many articles on the web say close to nothing about the topic you searched for. Even if the post ranks high on the list in Google you’re not likely to return are you?

Sometimes you only get one chance.

THEN you ask for their email and/or sales!

WordPress SEO Basics

1. The Article Title

The article header must be clear, descriptive and contain your main keywords. If possible the title could also evoke curiosity or make an offer to your target audience.

2. The Body Copy

The main content must be informative, concise and with a natural use of your main keyword phrases.

If you upload images or media and want them to be visible on google image search you will need to add the alt tags when you upload them to WordPress. Alt tags come into play for links, images, and media as well.

3. The URL

In WordPress 2.6.2 you can customize the url or the slug of your article page. Initially the url will be created for you in this format: http://www.yourwebsite.com/category/post-slug/

This is just above the Post body copy and HTML editor. You can edit the url and remove all the at,so,the, words as well as making sure that your keywords are there as well.

4. The Title Meta Tag

The title meta-tag is the most important element of your search engine ranking and it must be efficient and contain only your main keywords. This is the title that shows up on the very top of your browser and is different to the article title.

NOTE: This content is entered in the All in One SEO Pack tab below the main post/page edit window. YOu can download this WordPress plugin right here.

The title tag should contain the main keywords with no filler. They should be in order of importance as well. Often I find that hyphens make them more presentable. For example:

WordPress Training – Video Screencast Tutorials – How To Manage Your Media Uploads

You are allowed up to 67 characters for this meta-tag.

Note that here the “How To” section is not obsolete because this is part of a phrase that people use in search very often. Generally you would remove all instances of but,and,the,at, etc etc

Oh and don’t think that adding copies of a word are going to make more of an impression. Also don’t add words that are NOT related to the article or use more keywords than is relevant.

5. The Description Meta Tag.

This is also very important and generally shows up underneath the clickable blue title in the Google search results. If the searched for keywords are not in the description, Google grabs a section of your bopdy copy that contains them.

e.g. A search for “Classy Websites” returns my website at no3 in the results as shown.

This should read like a proper sentence that outlines why this article is worth someones time and energy to read ,listen or watch. It should contain your main keywords and early in the description if possible. For example:

SEO or Search Engine Optimization steps in a WordPress post or page.

You are allowed up to 160 characters for this tag.

6. The Keyword Meta Tag.

This tag is not often used by many of the main search engines but is still worth doing in most cases. Keep them simple on your main words. For example:

WordPress,Training,Tutorials,SEO,Google,Search

HOT TIP: In Firefox you can find these 3 meta tags on any web page by selecting View > Page Source.

You will see something like this:

<title>Effective Classy Websites - WordPress Screencasts & Tutorials - Web Development - Security</title>
<meta name="description" content="Wordpress screencast video training, website design, marketing tools and carefully filtered information that you can use now!" />
<meta name="keywords" content="Wordpress,Training,Tutorials,Classy,Websites,Classy Websites,Themes,Plugins,Web Design" /

This will give you a look at the meta-tags for any web page.

Some additional tips and ideas:

• Use bold to emphasize ideas and if possible your main keywords.
• Add the alt keywords for an image or link that relates directly to the media. Separate the words with dashes. In WordPress you can enter this when you upload the image.
• Use the “more” tag in your articles and place it early in your article. Not only does this make your blog page more reader friendly and scannable, it also minimizes the duplication of content. Google doesn’t like duplicate content. Which means no copying and pasting from other websites!@#

Some important plugins for SEO in WordPress:

• All in One SEO Pack
• SEO Post link
• Google XML Sitemap
• Sitemap Generator – to see an example of this click here.

One of the best ways to create higher search engine rankings is to build incoming links to your site from other well read and high ranking websites such as Digg.com.

But that is a whole new article.

Happy surfing!

If you find this training useful, visit the subscriptions page where you can download all our free video screencasts via iTunes.

There are 4 Chapters in this Quicktime movie. They are:

1. Adding Images
2. Managing Galleries
3. Adding a New Gallery
4. The Next Gen HTML Button

New and revamped in version 2.6 the Dashboard gives you quick access to all your main links and resources.

NOTE : If you are running WP 2.7 this will be outdated.

Why not subscribe to our free newsletter and download all our free training as full quicktime files, with chapters for skipping to the part you need.

Here’s an MP3 player to get you started. 01-preparing-the-way

Then an example of normal text.©

Bold – Italic – Strikethrough – Underline – Multicoloured text. © copyright and other €®?߶∞ symbols.

• List of things to structure
• More stuff to list

1. Numbered list
2. and one more

This is a quote from someone wise and old or at the very least wise.

Wise enough to publish an RSS feed for easy syndication.

A centered link to some where on the web.

WordPress also has a spell checker, preserves formatting from Word docs, and can edit in full screen. You could also…

Make a Statement with a headline.

Experiment with slightly less imposing H3 text with some colour

Then jazz out to H4 header text

Speaking of jazz heres that little cook from that great movie by PIXAR.

Or I can display one of my photo gallery albums, like so

[album=1,compact]

Embed a cool Flash banner.

$$$ Make a product available $$$

[wpsc_category=1]

Embed a YouTube movie.

[youtube]http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=4tEeKqh-d08[/youtube]

Or a Quicktime element.

[quicktime]http://wordpressdiykit.com/wp-content/uploads/malenystreet.mov[/quicktime]

Click and hold your mouse button on this image to move the vantage point.

]]> http://effectiveclassywebsites.com/media-and-formatting-demo-for-wordpress-26/feed/ 0 http://effectiveclassywebsites.com/how-to-manage-widgets-wordpress-sidebar-layout/ http://effectiveclassywebsites.com/how-to-manage-widgets-wordpress-sidebar-layout/#comments Tue, 26 Aug 2008 01:03:47 +0000 herrin http://effectiveclassywebsites.com/?p=209 This Screencast will give you an introduction to the Widgets page in the Design tab

Widgets are blocks of content that make up your sidebar or sidebars depending on the Theme you are using. To re-arrange the order of sidebar Widgets click and drag them then press Save.

Adding plugins will add more widgets. Explore more widgets on the WordPress website right here.