On January 1, 2003, two other women and I began blogging. We had been writing a popular Q&A column together for over a year on a large web site and decided to go solo. We wanted more freedom, more timely updates, more interaction with our readers.

In truth, I don’t recall whether any of us had ever heard the term “blogging” at the time. But what we envisioned was a site where we accepted questions, posted our answers, and then allowed reader feedback to be posted below the original post.

WordPress was just a glimmer in Matt Mullenweg’s eye and I hadn’t even graduated from hand coding to GoLive (not to mention DreamWeaver). My 16-year-old was trying to help me grasp CSS over table-based web design. So our original “blog” consisted of a groovy web site featuring our column and emailed replies entered daily — by hand.

That was ancient history. Things have improved.

Today starting a blog is exponentially easier and — with some guidance — requires little more technical skill than using a word processor.

The WordPress backend is elegant and straightforward. The Thesis Theme allows for one-click customization and has built in search engine optimization. Having your own domain and hosting means you control your blogging destiny and you present a professional face to the world.

If you’ve always wanted to start a blog, if you have ideas and stories to share with the world, if you want to take the next step in your business — make the move. Start your blog today! In one week, you’ll be sharing your ideas with the world!

Creating a custom image for your blog header requires tools and expertise that are — as my college professors would say when I asked a question they didn’t want to answer — “beyond the scope of this text.” But if you already have the image you want to use, adding it to your Thesis theme is a breeze. Follow these steps and you’ll have it done in just a few minutes.

Upload your image onto your server in this directory:

…wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/images

Login to your Dashboard.

Click on Appearance>Thesis Openhook in the left sidebar.

Scroll down to the field labeled Header. In this field, insert the following code with the two specified changes:

<a href="http://yourdomainname"><img src="http://yourdomainname/wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/images/yourfilename" alt="" /></a>

yourdomainname = the URL to your site (such as www.win-with-1.com)

yourfilename = the name you gave to your header image (such as logo.png)

Click the checkbox next to Remove Thesis default header.

Click Save.

Once you create a new WordPress page, you may want to make it accessible from the tabbed navigation bar at the top of your site. This is an easy process.

Log into your WordPress dashboard.

Click on Thesis Options>Thesis Options.

Click on the + sign next to Navigation Menu>Select pages to include in nav menu.

Click the check boxes next to the pages you want to include.

You can drag and drop these fields to change the order of the tabs in the nav menu. The item listed highest will be farthest to the left on your site, the lowest, to the right.

You can also edit the names next to the check boxes. The page title is the default tab name, but that may be too long or otherwise not suit your purposes. Simply click on the name to change it to something more suitable.

Click the large, green Save button at the bottom of the page.

When you go back to your site, you should see your new navbar complete with all the pages you selected.

Now that you know the difference between WordPress pages and posts, it’s time to set up your site by creating the basic pages you need.

Your Win with 1 Blogger Package already includes two crucial pages, the “About” and “Contact” pages. The “Contact” page already has a form set up and linked to your new domain email. You customized your “About” page and it looks great. Now we’ll step you through setting up more new pages from scratch.

Go to: http://www.YourNewDomain.com/wp-admin

Login using the username and password provided you by Win with 1.

This is the administrator Dashboard.

Click on Pages>Add New in the left navbar.

Add a page title in the field right under “Add New Page” heading.

In the main content field, enter whatever information you wish.

Click the small “Edit” button next to the “Permalink” designation. (It’s located right under the page title.)

Enter the URL you’d like to have for your page. The default is to reproduce the title, removing disallowed characters and replacing spaces with dashes. I leave this mostly intact, perhaps removing peripheral words, but leaving keywords in. For example, the default permalink for this post was “…blog-startup-create-a-new-page.” I changed it to “…create-new-page.”

Click the small “Save” button next to the “Permalink” designation.

When you are done editing, add a custom title tag and meta description.

Click “Publish” in the right navbar.

Your page is now live. If you want to link it from your tabbed navigation menu, follow the tabbed navigation tutorial.

As part of your blogger package, you have an “About” page included in your tabs. But it’s waiting for your personalization. To create your perfect “About” page, follow these simple steps:

Go to: http://www.YourNewDomain.com/wp-admin

Login using the username and password provided you by Win with 1.

This is the administrator Dashboard.

In the left navbar, go to Pages>Edit.

Move your mouse over the “About” page in the Edit Pages list. A menu will appear below the link. From the link, select “Edit.”

On the “About” Edit Page, Lick in the large text field. Enter any descriptive information that will help your readers.

When you are done editing, add a custom title tag and meta description.

Click “Update Page” in the upper right navbar.

You’re done! Now your readers can find out more about you and the purpose of your site.

WordPress allows you to create two kinds of web pages: posts and pages. It’s important for you to know the difference between the two.

WordPress Posts

Posts are your regular blog entries. They are the content that make up the main body of your blog.

When you write a post, it appears automatically — in reverse chronological order — on your blog home page. The most recent entries appear on top, giving your readers the freshest content first.

The article you are reading right now is a post.

WordPress Pages

Pages are mainly designed for content that is not time dependent. Common examples are “Contact,” “About Us,” “Privacy Policy,” and “Terms of Service” pages.

Pages have titles and content just like posts. Unlike posts, they can be organized into pages with subpages. They do not have categories or tags, and they do not cycle through your blog’s home page. They can use different templates than posts.

Win-with-1.com has four pages:

1. Be a Blogger in 1 Week! — acts as a static home page advertising our services
2. Contact — our contact information
3. Renewal — Information on renewing our blogging services after the first year
4. Order Now — used as a holder for our shopping cart integration

In addition to those four, we actually have a fifth page titled “Blog” that is used as the post aggregator for our site. This is only necessary because we are not using the default home page for the blog list. If you have your recent blog posts included on the home page, as is typical, this all occurs automatically and you don’t need to create another page for it.

Choose Wisely

Before you create a post or create a page, think about the content you are adding and how it fits functionally in your site. Then choose the correct type of web page to suit your purposes.

What is metadata? Technically, it’s data about data or, in the case of blogs, it’s info that describes what your audience wants to see and helps give a context for your content. As search engines crawl your site, they gather information from various metadata sources, compare then, and rank the site depending on how well the information matches.

As far as your blog is concerned, there are only a few things you really need to know, and they aren’t complex. The first bits are the WordPress categories and tags you already learned about. Easy, right? The few others you should understand are the custom title tag and meta description. These apply to posts and to pages in WordPress.

Custom Title Tag

The custom title tag is the text that shows up in three important places for your readers.

1. The title bar of the web browser
2. The linked title of search engine results
3. The default bookmark title

This is an important bit of information! You want it to be intriguing to draw viewers to your site, but you also want it to be accurate! No one gets warm fuzzies by being tricked into coming to a site. You want targeted traffic — the people who are really looking for the info you provide.

Because Thesis is designed to make search engine optimization easy, it has everything you need built in! To set up your custom title tag, follow these steps:

Go to: http://www.YourNewDomain.com/wp-admin

Login using the username and password provided you by Win with 1.

Go to “SEO Details and Additional Style.”

In the “Custom Title Tag” field, put a short, descriptive phrase that will entice people to come to your site and that uses some of the keywords you are targeting on that page. You can use the same text you used for your post title or something more suitable for a search engine result.

Meta Description

This bit of data is used in search engine results. After a search engine shows a linked titled (that comes from your Custom Title Tag), it gives a short description of the page it’s linking to.
This info usually comes from your meta description.

These few sentences should be, once again, very descriptive, accurate, and intriguing. Tell searchers why they want to read this page on your site!

Go to: http://www.YourNewDomain.com/wp-admin

Login using the username and password provided you by Win with 1.

Go to “SEO Details and Additional Style.”

In the “Meta Description” field, type in a few interesting sentences that describe what your page is about and what benefit readers can get from going to it.

Home Page Meta Description

As you can set a meta description for each post and page you create, you can also give a meta description to your home page. Since the default home page on a WordPress blog is a collection of your most recent posts, you set this meta description up differently.

Go to: http://www.YourNewDomain.com/wp-admin

Login using the username and password provided you by Win with 1.

Click on Thesis Options>Thesis Options in the left navbar.

Click on the + button next to Home Page>Home Page Meta.

In the “Meta description for your home page” field, add a general description of the purpose of your entire site.

Add keyword if you are so inclined. (As below, I generally don’t bother.)

Click on the giant “Save” button at the bottom of the page.

What About Meta Keywords?

The next item you’ll see in the “SEO Details and Additional Style” section, as well as the “Home Page” section is “Meta Keywords.” In my opinion, it’s not worth your time to add keywords. In theory, this space is a place for you to enter words and phrases that relate to your post. But for years now keywords have been abused. Unscrupulous webmasters (whose goal is to generate traffic, not to serve the real needs of web surfers) have stuffed the keywords with all sorts of non-related, but popular, garbage: names of celebrities, vulgar terms, competitors’ product names, etc. Over time they have become useless as a means of determining what content is really on a page.

Inexplicably the WordPress Codex makes this claim:

Keywords meta tags, on the other hand, are still used by Google and other important search engines to categorize and rank your website.

Google itself, however, says just the opposite. Google, wisely, does not use keywords. And any search engine that does is basing it’s decision-making algorithm on faulty data, to say the least.

So, again, I suggest you spend your time writing great content for your blog, instead of trying to master the fine art of keyword stuffing.

Now your site and post/page metadata is up and running. Your target readers are more likely to find the great content you’re producing!

WordPress provides two ways to organize and classify your posts: categories and tags. Categories have been around for ages, tags came about a few years ago. You are free to use them in any way that suits you. But the folks at WordPress have defined the intended use of categories and tags. I tend to use them in much the same way and so will describe that here.

Categories

When I begin a new blog, I think about the topic and look for broad categories in which my future posts will likely fit. Much as I organize my filing cabinets with files in broad topics (such as “automobile” or “holidays”), I try to select a few, generally applicable categories.

To set up your selected categories, follow these steps:
Go to: http://www.YourNewDomain.com/wp-admin

Login using the username and password provided you by Win with 1.

In the left sidebar, select Posts>Categories. Enter the new name in the “Add Category” field. Use something short and descriptive.

Add a slug in the “Category Slug” field. I will generally use the same words that I used for the category name, only will no capital letters and hyphens in between words.

For example, on my mortgage-free home blog, I have the following categories and slugs:

• Pre-Construction
  pre-construction
• Site Work
  site-work
• Exterior
  exterior
• Foundation & Framing
  foundation-framing
• Rough-Ins
  rough-ins
• Interior
  interior
• Landscaping
  landscaping
• Post-Construction
  post-construction
• Finances
  finances
• Decorating
  decorating
• General Living
  general-living
• Pixel Ads
  pixel-ads
• Contests
  contests

Later, when I actually write a post, I select the appropriate category or categories that fit the content.

You can also add categories on the fly — while writing a new post — if the correct categories are not available. To do this, follow these steps:

In the right sidebar of your Add New Post page, find the Categories heading.

Select “+ Add New Category.”

Type in the new category name.

If you want to make this new category a subcategory, select the “Parent category” in the drop down menu.

Click the “Add” button.

Tags

When the new post is ready to publish, take a minute to add the appropriate tags. I use the tags as a way to further clarify the article theme and content. For example, if the article was categorized as “automobile,” the possible tags might be: tires, insurance, maintenance, or Toyota. If the category was “holidays,” the possible tags might be: Christmas, entertaining, or menus.

Make your tags more specific. You can use as many as are pertinent to the article and they can be longer if it makes sense. To add tags, simply follow these steps:

In the right sidebar, find the “Post Tags” heading.

Enter all the tags you like, separating each one with a comma.

Alternately, you can click the “Choose from the most used tags in Post Tags” link to select popular tags you’ve used before. [Note: this list will not include all the tags you've ever used.]

When you are satisfied with your list, click the “Add” button.

Some of the tags on the mortgage-free home blog include:

• house plans
• square footage
• kitchen
• blueprints
• appliances
• mortgage
• cabinets
• toys
• light fixtures

With your posts properly categorized and tagged, you make it easier for people to find your site and then find the content they are interested in. This also aids tag-based blog search sites like Technorati and  Del.icio.us.  Make sure you take the time to categorize and tag each of your new posts.

Once we notify you that your blog is ready, you can begin to get it ready for prime time. This post will explain how to create a name and tagline in your blog header.

Go to: http://www.YourNewDomain.com/wp-admin

Login using the username and password provided you by Win with 1.

This is the administrator Dashboard.

Scroll down to Settings>General in the left nabvar. Click General Settings.

There you can set your blog title and tag line. I suggest you keep your blog title the same as your URL to avoid confusion and make it easier for readers to find you again. Also, change the tag line to something that describes your site or further defines your niche.

That’s it. Go back to your blog URL and you will find an appropriately titled, clickable header.

Your Win with 1 Blogger Package includes a $100 Pixel Ad on a ranked, active blog! As soon as you purchase your package, you can set up your pixel ad with a link to your new site. Here’s how:

1. Go to the Buy Brix creation page
2. Click on “Buy Brix”
3. Drag your cursor over any empty 10×10 pixel square. It should be highlighted in red.
4. Click “Continue.”
5. If you have a 10×10 image you want to upload, click “Choose file” and select it from your hard drive. Otherwise, select any picture from the many categories listed. (If you use a picture that is not square, it will be stretched to fit your space.)
6. Click “Continue.”
7. Enter the exact URL for your new site.
8. Enter the title. This will show up in the Tip Tools when anyone hovers over your image and also on the Brixters Page. Use some descriptive keywords to encourage clicking!
9. Enter Alt Tags, probably your site name or a short keyword phrase.
10. Click “Continue.”
11. Enter your email address twice.
12. Click “Continue.”
13. Click “Pay with Offline Payment.”
14. Shoot us an email from the contact page. Enter the subject line “Win with 1 Pixel Ad.” As soon as I receive the notice, I will activate your image and link.

That’s it! Now you have link love from a ranked blog!