This will show you how to upload and install a new WP theme that you have downloaded. It also covers how to browse the WordPress.org themes site as well.

NOTE: This guide shows the interface from WP 2.8 but also features an admin navigation plugin called “Ozh’ Drop Down Admin Menus” Find out how to install that right here.

1. Start by Logging in to your WP site.
2. Click on the Appearance tab then select Add New Themes.  (To preview themes already installed click Themes)
3. Now we can choose to browse the WordPress.org site by using Search or selecting layout elements like Black, Left Sidebar etc, then click on the Find Themes button. Or we can click the Featured | Newest | Recently Updated to see those options as well.
4. To upload a theme we have downloaded to our computer already click the Upload link.
5. Click the Browse button and navigate to the sopt of your PC where the ZIP file is located. Press Install Now.
6. Once it has been uploaded, WordPress will ask if you want to Preview | Activate | Return To Theme Viewer.
7. Pressing Preview will show you what your site would look like to visitors.
8. Click Activate if you want the new look to go “Public”.
9. You have a new theme for your site!

Screencast Tutorial – Installing Themes in WordPress

Here we show you how to quickly and easily find and add plugins to your self-hosted WordPress website.

NOTE: This guide has us install an important feature to the backend of your site that speeds up your navigation. Highly Recommended!

From the Dashboard after logging in:

1. Click on the Plugins tab. (it’s faster if you click on the down arrow that appears instead of the text link)

2. Select Add New.

3. From the Install Plugins page, you can browse all the plugins within the WordPress.org directory using either Keywords, Plugin Authors, or Tags. In addition we can Upload a zip file or, show only Featured, Popular, Newest or Recently Updated plugins.

4. Enter the exact name of the plugin into the Term dropdown field (i.e. Keywords). See screen shot for example.

COPY and PASTE the name below exactly for accuracy.

Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu

5. Press the Search Plugins button.

6. The plugin we are after should be at the top of the list of results.

7. Click the Install link on the right and accept the request WP gives you.

8. WP will ask if you want to Activate the plugin.

We’re done and ready for plugin configuration!

NOTE: Most often WordPress plugin options show up in the Settings tab, but it can vary.

What It Does: Allows you to quickly and easily, search for and insert YouTube movies, royalty free images from Flickr, Wikipedia links, Google searches and even links from your own site, into your posts and pages.

Insights uses a dynamic AJAX interface which loads search results in seconds, all within the WordPress posting page!

Who Needs It: Anyone that has a self-hosted WordPress website.

Link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/insights

Author: Vladimir Prelovac

Instructions

To add a YouTube Video:

1. Position your cursor where you want the video to appear.
2. Click the Videos button within the Insights box and in the Search field enter the Title of the video.For a more specific search you may want to paste in the actual videos title from YouTube. Like most search, the more keywords you use the more your results will refine.
3. The window will magically expand and show you the search results.
4. Click on a video thumbnail and it will open up and allow you play the video.
5. Click the Add Video button to insert the movie into your post or page.

To add an Image from Flickr:

1. Click the Image button
2. Enter a search term or name and press Search
3. The page will window will automagically expand to show image results from Filckr.
4. You can choose the image size from the drop-down.
5. Click the image you want to insert it into your post.
6. You can then highlight the image again and click Unlink (link defaults to the larger image on Flickr) or align it with the text aiignment buttons.

To add a link from Wikipedia:

1. Click the Wikipedia button
2. Enter a search term or name
3. Clicking the text link will take you to the page in a new window.
4. Highlight some text in your document.
5. Click the small Pen Link button next to the link you want in the results window.

You can even search your own site with the My Blog button. Very handy!

To initiate the search you can also press return on your keyboard.

Video Screencast Training

Screenshots:

We also touch on an important iPhoto management tip.

If you hold the Option key when you launch iPhoto it will allow you to create a new library or choose a previous one. Great if you have many projects and do not want them to be mixed up together.

The steps to importing a CD of images are:

1. Launch iPhoto and/or choose the correct library.
2. Create a new Album by clicking the plus sign on the bottom left sidebar.
3. Drag and drop the CD from your desktop into the new album on the left.
4. Watch the slide show as the images import.

Write to us and request a training.

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.

For information on how to maximize your video sharing efforts click here.

Here is the process summarized:

• Go to the page on YouTube (or other video sharing site) where the video displays.
• look for the EMBED: text and Copy the code (Command+C on a MAC and ALT+C on Windows)
• You can in some cases do some customizing of the player before you copy the code.
• Open a page or post in WordPress and type PASTE CODE where you want the player to appear.
• Switch from the Visual mode to HTML mode in the WordPress Post window.
• Find the PASTE CODE text within the HTML and Paste the Video embed code here. (Command+V on a Mac and ALT+V on Windows.)
• Press Publish or View This Post to see how it looks!

First, a YouTube.com video.

And now a video from www.Revver.com.

And now a Playlist from YouTube.

Subscribe to our free newsletter and download all our free trainings as full Quicktime files with chapters.

The Quicktime chapters are:

1. Intro and Log-in
2. Title, Categories and Pasting from Word docs
3. HTML Editor Buttons and Formatting
4. Uploading and Adding Images
5. Adding an MP3 Download
6. Uploading a PDF for download
7. Tags and Previewing a Post
8. Publishing & Status Sidebar
9. SEO Considerations – (Search Engine Optimization)
10. Advanced Options

Download this Quicktime Screencast now and benefit from the power of detailed video training.

If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to contact us here. Thank you and hope this empowers you to take charge of this awesome web platform

Getting Started

1. Get clear on what your page or article is about and jot down some keywords and/or body text that gives you an outline. One of the strengths of the article based format is that it encourages small bits of focused information.

2. Prepare any resources you want in your article, such as images and videos. This includes uploading movies to YouTube and optimizing your photos so that the files are small enough to load quickly on your web pages.

3. Log on to your site with your username and password. You should arrive at the WordPress dashboard.

4. If you are editing a page or post, click on MANAGE, then POSTS or PAGES. This page will display a list of the current pages or posts. Click on the title of the article you want to edit.

5. If you want to write a new post or page then go to WRITE, then POST or PAGE.

The Basics

1. The Title - If possible your title should:

• Describe what the article is about,
• contain some of your strong keywords,
• evoke some curiosity in the reader,
• and/or describe a benefit that makes it clear why they should invest their time reading your article..

2. The Body Copy – This is the main story or copy for the article. You can write this in an external editor and then copy and paste it in or you can write it within this very window. If you write your copy in a Word doc you might like to use the Word import button. Click the Show/Hide Kitchen Sink button then the Paste from Word button.

3. Choose a Category – If you’re editing a page this step does not apply, but every article must be assigned a Category. Categories give you and your visitors way to group your articles in terms of their interests. Make them succinct and descriptive.

Categories are the new Pages on the web.

You can break information down into digestible articles by assigning a category and then you can provide ongoing value AND people are more likely to keep coming back, and/or buy your product.

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