Blogging has really kicked off in Ireland, with both companies and individuals seeing the benefit of blogging as well as using blog software as the content management system of choice for their website.

I’ve put together a guide that I’ve used when creating, installing or configuring blogs, getting the best plugins and configuring the various options to make it secure & optimised.

As well as that, I’ll include setting up Google Analytics, Feedburner and Google Webmaster Tools.

What’s needed

1. A domain name and website hosting – I like using Digiweb Hosting in Ireland, and UK2 in the UK.
2. FTP Client – I recommend Filezilla, it’s free & cross platform
3. Some basic website knowledge

Step 1 – Download WordPress

Download the latest version of WordPress, which comes in zip format. Unzip the files to somewhere on your computer, you will be left with a folder called “wordpress” – inside this folder are the files you need to upload.

Here’s where you make the choice on where you want to install your blog, I recommend using it in the root directory for a new website, or at blog.website.com for an existing website where you want to add a blog. Never upload it as website.com/wordpress.

If you want to have all your blog content at website.com/blog you can enable this in the settings after install without having to specifically install wordpress in a separate folder.

Step 2 – Create Database & Database User

This is relatively straight forward, most website hosters give access to a control panel which allows you to configure your website options. Here’s my example from Digiwebs CP using the create MySQL wizard.

You’ll need to give your database a name, and description – it helps if these are meaningful, next step is to create a database user, and create a password – I use this online tool to generate random passwords.

Keep track of the name of the Database, Database User, and the Database server IP/URL (like mysql.websitehosting.com)

Step 3 – Editing the WP-CONFIG file

Before uploading the files, you need to edit one file, the wp-config-sample.php file. Open this file up using your favourite text editor (notepad/textedit) and look for the following.

// ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'barryh_test'); // The name of the database
define('DB_USER', 'barryh_test'); // Your MySQL username
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password'); // ...and password
define('DB_HOST', 'mysql1.hosting.digiweb.ie');
define('DB_COLLATE', '');

You’ll need the database information saved earlier, enter it.

Next up, look for this part:

define(’AUTH_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);
define(’SECURE_AUTH_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);
define(’LOGGED_IN_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);
define(’NONCE_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);

Visit WordPress Secret Key for and copy and paste the details (this link is unique for each visit – hit refresh to see)

These security keys are used for encryption of cookies and improve security of your blog.

All done, save the file as wp-config.php (dropping the -sample from the filename).

Step 4 – Uploading Files

Open up Filezilla(or your FTP client of choice), and create a FTP connection to your website host – you should have these details when you purchased your hosting – you need Host/IP, Username & Password

Connect and navigate to your website folder (usually websitename.com) – this is the root directory. With the pane to the left being your local files, and the right being your website remote files.

Almost done, now upload all the local files to the remote server (drag all files left to right) – this will take a few minutes depending on your network speed.

Step 5 – .htaccess & Changing FTP Permissions

While still in Filezilla, here are a few really useful things to do before finishing up. First up, download my .htaccess template(right click>save). Open this file and change barryhand.ie to your website address.

# CANONICAL URL
# Change 'barryhand.ie' to your website address
rewritecond %{http_host} ^barryhand.ie [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.barryhand.ie/$1 [r=301,nc]

This creates a search engine friendly method of redirecting your website address to include www. – More on canonocial urls here.

Save, and upload to your server. Right click the uploaded file and rename to “.htaccess” (removing barry)
In filezilla the file might disappear from listing, click the Filezilla menu ‘Server’ and enable ‘force show hidden files’

Next up, right click .htaccess and Set File Permissions to 777.

This allows the file to be edited by WordPress later on (for setting up seo’d permalinks)

While also in Filezilla, navigate to WP-CONTENT and create a new folder called ‘uploads’ and set permissions to 777 – this will be used for uploading images through WordPress later on. More information on changing file permissions here.

Step 6 – Running the installer

Open a browser, and navigate to yourwebsite.com/wp-admin/install.php this will run the installer script.

Fill in your blog title (you can change this later), your email and make sure Allow my blog to appear in search engines like Google and Technorati is checked. Click install and that’s it!

The next screen will give you your admin username and password, log in using these details. That’s it – you’ll get the WordPress dashboard.

Step 7 – Change Permalink Structure

Goto Settings>Permalinks – The default permalink is http://website.com/?p=123. This is poor for SEO, and doesn’t tell your visitors anything about the link they’re viewing.

I recommend post title (http://website.com/title-of-post), even though I currently use category/post title((http://website.com/category-name/title-of-post)

Enter /%postname% into the custom field, click on save – the file edited earlier(.htaccess) is the file which get’s overwritten here. If you get an error, it’s because the file is not editable.

Step 8 – Security Settings

Remove the admin account: this is a good idea for security, and also it’s better to have a real author than seeing a post made by ‘admin’.

Goto Users>Add New and fill in your details, make sure you set yourself up as an administrator. Now you can delete the admin account and login again using your new user account.

Step 9 – Creating an XML Sitemap

You can install plugins via the Plugins menu on the left hand side, you’ll need that FTP information.

For this you’ll need to install the Google XML Sitemap plugin, this plugin creates a list of all URL’s on your blog and puts them in an easy to read format for Googlebot, this ensures Google has the full list of URL’s to index.

To run this generator, click on rebuild manually – you should get an error here, to fix the permissions you can temporarily change your blog folder permissions to 777, rebuild the sitemap which will create a file called sitemap.xml. Change the permissions on this file to 777, and then change the blog folder permission back to 755.

Step 10 – Google Webmaster Tools & Sitemaps

So now we’ve got an sitemap.xml file, Next step is to link this to your Google Webmaster Tool account, Google’s Webmaster Tools allows you to get some extra information on how Google view’s your website. First of all signup preferably with your main Google account (which you might already use for AdWords etc.)

You’ll need to verify your website, with two options – either add a meta head tag, or upload a blank html file

I prefer the upload method. Create a blank file as above and upload this to the website root, it should verify pretty quickly.

As your sitemap contains nothing much so far, you’re not going to get any meaningful data here, but it’s important to get this done correctly from the start. After a while you’ll get all sorts of useful information that only you will be able to see.

Step 11 – Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free service which gives detailed information on website traffic. Signup for an account and you’ll get custom tracking code to implement, make sure this is the newer tracking code (ga.js) – copy it somewhere for the next step.

If you’re comfortable with editing your template files, you can just go ahead and drop that code in the footer, although there’s a nice plugin – Ultimate Google Analytics, this allows you to paste the tracking code in the wordpress backend.

Once installed, check back to Google Analytics to check that data is being collected properly. Google Analytics Blog is a handy place for official information.

Step 12 – Feedburner for RSS

Acquired by Google, Feedburner is like a swiss army knife for your RSS feed. Signup and add a new feed.

Enter your blog or feed address, here’s a nice guide on how to configure feedburner. Two of the nice features are the ability to offer feeds by email, and to embed feeds as HTML or use as a signature.

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

After setting up Feedburner, you now need to redirect the blog feed to feedburner, pretty straight forward guide here from Google.

Step 13 – Extra SEO settings

Almost there, last recommended plugin is the most downloaded one for WordPress called All in One SEO Pack, this contains the ability to configure recommended SEO options which the default install lacks. Install it and go to the settings page.

Step 14 – Themes

So after all of this, all of the recommended settings and plugins have been applied, you’re still stuck with the default theme. Luckily there’s a wide choice of free themes, as well as premium one’s like these from woothemes.

Step 15 – Anti-Spam

Just before you announce your new blog to the world, enable Akismet (Plugins>Akismet Coniguration). You’ll need an API key, but it’s very easy to generate one. This plugin helps tackle spam comments.

Is that it?

This is by no means everything, just some of the simple steps I’ve used when creating & configuring WordPress blogs. There are a huge amount of plugins and options available which will allow your blog to do almost anything!