What To Do With A New WordPress Blog
So you just got a bright shiny new WordPress blog and you are dying to get it it all tricked out and looking perfect right? Slow down there speedy! The first thing to do is ask yourself a few questions and see if you should spend the time or money to get the WordPress blog to look how you really want.
This post is inspired by those few but quite regular new WordPress clients I get that want what amounts to an established WordPress blog right from the start. The very first question is how to or how much to add a header to the blog, then there is the question of adding all those “thingies” on the side, and putting images in posts, adding AdSense in posts and on the side or in the footer and then make these colors like this site and the links like that site and put these flowers over here and these doggie images over there. Then there is adding Flash, pop-up opt-ins, videos, different background colors and images and on and on and on… WAIT! Slow down. These are usually people who have no experience with WordPress or blogging and they just want a blog or site that looks perfect. Well guess what here is a reality check, if this is a brand new blog those zero or few visitors you will be getting really don’t care what your blog looks like or what fancy “thingies” are on the sidebar. All they and the search engines care about is good original content they want to read and share.
Occasionally I will get contacted by a client whom I setup a WordPress blog for weeks or even months back asking for help getting started. Wanting the header changed and some or even all of the things I ranted about in the above paragraph. But when I check the blog there are no or very little changes made. If I can still login to the dashboard, maybe a post or two is made, but none of the things are done from the many guides and instructions given to them.
Now don’t get me wrong about the look of your WordPress blog, and I understand that you want it to look good to you and pleasing to your visitors. Keep in mind that the theme can be changed without loosing any content or sidebar items. So my first advice is to experiment with different themes, learn the proper use of sidebar items and add some things to the sidebar. But most importantly use the blog to make posts, this will help you get a better understating of how it will look as it gets established with content. And more importantly learning how and using the blog will give you a better idea if you want to even pursue blogging.
The whole point is to first learn the basics and how to use WordPress. Decide if you are serious about blogging then make an educated decision to either learn how to, or to pay someone to customize the look of your WordPress blog. I almost always will give a client or potential client a similar response when asked for a custom theme. I can usually tell by the questions that they know very little about WordPress, and while I could just give them what they want and charge them for it I would rather give them the time to decide after spending some time learning more about WordPress.
So what do you do with a new WordPress blog? First learn how to properly use it, decide if you want to keep it and then learn how to or pay someone to tweak it. The look can evolve over time and not everything needs done at once. As you learn more and gain experience, what you thought was cool at first may not seen so later, and what seemed so hard to do might be easily done on your own. Remember the look is really for you, the content is what really matters to everyone else.
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Comments
it’s a shame that people think that wordpress blogs will write themselves lol
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free Xbox 360 Replied:
June 21st, 2009 at 5:00 pm
As long as they don’t cut and paste from elsewhere…
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Im still confusing how to use wordpress,
so im use blogspot only :$
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azwan Replied:
June 9th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
I was a blogspot user, but once i tried wordpress (the free one at wordpress.com) i never look back. You should try.
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wisata sEo Sadau Replied:
June 12th, 2009 at 8:36 am
Agreed with Azwan.. You should try using WP Engine
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You are right, far too few people focus on the most important thing: the content. I think they are expecting such quick results they get bored and quit. If instead they focused on content they were really interested in then they can get to the other stuff later. And they would remain interested long enough to make it into a successful blog.
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[...] What To Do With A New WordPress Blog [...]
I think you hit the nail right on the head about needing to know the basics of blogging, even if you set-up a blog for someone. Knowing what to expect and what will be required to set-up, monetize and operate a WordPress blog before you begin a blog is a prudent move in my opinion. Great article.
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The big problem I think is that with things like blogs, Facebook, and Twitter reaching this level of popularity is that even people who are computer illiterate are learning about them. They get in a frenzy to use any tool that can help their business, but they fail to understand that these “tools” are not just a matter of posting up a few flyers. You need to be dedicated and to actually understand for them to work.
That’s my stance anyway.
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Absolutely. Its important to learn how to differentiate between creating true, meaningful content with a blog rather than narcissistic updates that nobody will care to read or follow.
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Yes blogs are very time consuming. I agree. What I have found is like anything, its important to be consistent, whether that is setting aside an hour a day for blogging or an hour a week. whatever that is, its important to never miss your routine.
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While creating Word Press we have to take this in account that it is important to have a theme which is going with your blogs that is if you want to write blogs about your business or any thing related to it then the theme should be very professional, and while writing the blog the topic should be very precise and the content should be well explained regarding to that topic so that visitors will get everything through your blog…..and also to make updates to your blog, and serve your blogs with some Plug Ins too..
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You hit the right chord with me. I have often seen friends who want to use sezwho or show a ticker of recent comments etc. I tell them these are available at a click of a button but also find that they hardly have any comments.
Information on the blog is far more important than the design, though design can make people ‘like’ the blog and allow blogger to use call to action elements but users won’t stick if there is no content (or if they see last post was 2 years ago).
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I think that most people starting a new word press blog should learn the basics of CSS. From there you can really just pic a template and edit it the way you want it to look, and its really quite easy!
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I heared that doing lot of experiments on Wordpress Blog Google banned the blog. But this article is really helpful.
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As content is the king as we know the blog should be filled with good and unique content. The theme on which we are going to make the blog is also very important.
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Thanks for shedding light on wordpress. Good tips. – Mike
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Best way to know wordpress is by setting up a blog by yourself. Only then you can be familiar of ins and outs of wordpress.
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This article is really very helpful especially for people who have just started creating their own blog. They should learn the basics first before going on complicated things. However, it is just very easy if you explore.
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great post for beginners
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great post for the beginners, before knowing about wordpress set up the blog by yourself.this article is really very helpful for the people who has just started creating thier own blog.
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Wordpress is amazing, with the addons, there is really nothing it cannot be.
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great ideas, this could really help some new people get started, i agree that trying it out before editing a theme is a great idea.
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touche!!
blogging is all about content.. shit don’t have values..
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Before creating a blog, the motive for which it is creating should be in your mind. Then only the aim of making a blog will be successful.Then you need to make content on the topic which you have in mind.
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Blogging really does take a lot of time (if you do it right), something I didn’t realize when I decided to start a personal blog. I spend a lot of time writing blogs for work, and I end up feeling kind of drained when it’s time to work on my personal site. Needless to say, I haven’t written a new post in months. However, I think it’s better to write great content for one site than poor content for two.
Nice post–thanks!
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Color Printing Replied:
June 24th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
I agree with you completely! Blogging usually takes time and effort.. its a good thing since people can share their thoughts on things using that kind of medium. It need a lot of thinking and ideas as well..
People, keep blogging!
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Thanks for your ideas. I am having a Blogger Blog and I am planning to move to Wordpress in a Next few days. So I have prepared a test Blog and I am testing different Themes and other widgets on it.
So that When my original blog is set up It wont appear Crappy for my Readers.
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I love the wordpress blog and all the templates and plugins you can get. Use to use blogger until I had a client ask me to build a wordpress blog. I now have my own wordpress blog and blog from time to time.
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You are totally right. You can always change the way your site looks. I think you need to prove that you can drive traffic to your site and then worry about the gadgets on your site that might increase their user experience.
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content is key, values are less important
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This is great advice. I wish I would have got this advice when I first had my wordpress blog. I spent a lot of money on addons, and all sorts of widgets that I later ended up removing.
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content is still the king, thanks for your advice..
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That is excellent advice for creating a Wordpress blog.
As you say all the bells and whistles are no substitution for great content.
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When clients want a Wordpress blog and they want me to develop the theme, I always ask that in the meanwhile, they think about the content and already have some content ready when they want to launch to website.
I think it’s great when you have enough content to add a new post 2 times a week for the first month when launching.
Content is king!
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Great article, your advice is very very much appreciated. Having a blog whether it’s personal, marketing or hobby blog content is still the key to making it successful.
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You are so right. The first thing I was concerned with was the look of my blog. And now it looks pretty good but that looks don’t equal traffic! lol
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Paying some one isn’t always too good though as if it is a small time blog it may be easier to spend a few hours of tweaking to make it “perfect” – That’s my view anyways but I’m good with computers so i would naturally say this though it may be harder for other people to understand the coding site of it all…. who knows?
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Jeff Replied:
July 7th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Paying someone a small fee to get an optimized WP setup and ready to run isn’t a bad way to start at all. If you start with my service it will cut off weeks of research time or more trying to figure out how to optimize and fully utilize a WordPress blog.
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This is a very relevant post right now – and I agree with your sentiments. Although fairly new to Wordpress myself I’ve agreed to help a friend get a sort of ‘business card’ style website and blog up for a business he’s starting up. I’ve suggested Wordpress for precisely some of the reasons you highlight in the post – the look and feel can, to a pretty large extent, be altered down the line. I’ve suggested he has a look through the free themes directory for the sort of style he wants and we run with that for now. We’ll set up a ‘contact us’, ‘about’ etc then let him start blogging. I said to him almost exactly what you suggest above – just get in there and start putting out some posts and familiarise yourself with the interface of Wordpress to start with rather than stressing too much about whether the site is ‘perfect’. Is there anything else we should make sure we get set-up correctly at the outset? Things that can’t be fixed down the line?
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I’ve always found wordpress easy to use and easy to edit. Its a great way to start as a beginner as compared to other content management systems.
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You’re right, the content matters more than image. As people are more interested in content will be even higher expectations. A successful blog should have and image and content.
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i do have a blog. i am not a blogger though.this will really help me out.
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I am a new user in wordpress, one of advantage using wordpress is I do not need an expert in template design, wordpress has provided so many themes and free.
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Your article reminds me of my own experience. Last year, I switched from Blogger to Wordpress and I was doing exactly that: spending hours in choosing the “right” theme for my future blog. I have learned how to customize the look, to tweak it, and even managed to use css. But now my priority is to find or write very good quality content, which after all, is always king.
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this one is great .perfectly written.this will help me a lot.. thanks .keep sharing.
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wonderful to read this..i have a blog but i am not a good blogger though.its useful and helpful as well.
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I absolutely agree with you there. Looks are mostly for yourself, in the end what it really matters is the content. You should focus more on creating quality and original content than wasting all your energy on building a great looking site. If your site looks decent and if the users can navigate it well, the design does not matter the most. What you should strive for is the content that offers both value and meaning…
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Well, i agree content is the king, but your WP surely need to have a correct theme and design to match your content, else it will really waste all your blogging effort, especially if your WP does involve e-commerce purpose. Visitors will not pay attention to your blogging content if it doesn’t “look” right.. So plan and design it appropriately right from the very start…
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This reminds me of when we first started the blog. I wanted to add all this junk to make the site look nice, but realized I hadn’t written anything. So instead I slowly wrote posts and then after 6 posts I decided to update the theme. Now I see you really don’t need most of the visual garbage that is so easy to install.
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Drive-By comments will be deleted! Like "Thanks for sharing", "Nice post", or any other text that doesn't contribute to the discussion. If you ask a very specific question about your particular WordPress theme, it will probably be deleted. I can fix your WordPress site but for a price. If you ask a question like "Why don't my blog work right", it will be deleted. If you ask a question about your WordPress site without a leaving a link to it, it will be deleted. The point is to ask questions and or comment on the the actual content of the post, and to please use some common sense. All comments are moderated and will appear when approved. Thank you.