Thank you Bebe for your patience, proofreading, and love.

Your Band Blog

Christopher Joel

Copyright © 2009 by Christopher Joel Wilcoxson

Make Me An Expert Press

Nashville, TN

Find more info about the author and this book at http://christopherjoel.com

Editor and proofreader: Anna Wilcoxson

Cover designed by: Christopher Joel
Layout by: Christopher Joel

NOTICE OF RIGHTS
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the
publisher. Contact the author at cj@christopherjoel.com for permission.

NOTICE OF LIABILITY
The information in the book is provided “AS IS”, without warranty. While every precaution was taken
in the preparation of this book, neither the author nor the publisher shall have any liability to any person
or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the
instructions contained in this book or by the computer software and hardware products described in it.
 Table of Contents
Introduction 5

Chapter One - Why WordPress? 7

Chapter Two - Website Basics 9

Hosts and Servers 9
Bonus Questions 11
Domain Names 12
Choosing a Domain Name 12
Buying Your Domain Name 12

Chapter Three - Install WordPress 13

Applications 13
FTP 13
Compression Utilities 14
Text Editor 14
Web Browser 14
Create Your MySQL Database 14
Create an FTP User 17
Five-Minute Install 19

Chapter Four - Configure WordPress 22

Dashboard 22
Settings Menu 23
Pages 30
Customizing WordPress 36
Themes 36
How to Install Themes 37
Using Themes 39
HTML, CSS, & PHP 40
Tips For Customizing Themes 41

Chapter Five - WordPress Plugins 43

How To Install Plugins 43
Automatically 43
Semi-Manually 45
Manually 46
Performance and Maintenance Plugins 47
Blog Ownership Plugins 53
Musician Plugins 69
Chapter Six - Companion Sites 72
Blog Tools 72
Music and Media 77
Artist Tools 87
Social Networking 96

Chapter Seven - How I Got To #1 102

What is SEO? 102
Increase Your Relevance 103
Keywords 103
Titles Attribute in Links 103
Increase Your Popularity 104
Link Popular Sites to Yours 104
Comment on Other Blogs 104
Fans & Friends 105
Blog Settings 105
Categories 105
Permalinks 107
Plugins 108

Chapter Eight - Finishing Touches 113

Widgets 113
Plugins 115
Favicon 116
Create a Favicon 117
Mobile Ready 118
No Comments 121
Cache 121
Database Backup 121

Chapter Nine - Owning A Blog 122

Best Practices 122
Ideas For Blog Posts 124
Get Started! 125
 INTRODUCTION 5

Introduction

Before I tell you about how to

use WordPress as your website,
let me introduce myself. My
name is Christopher Joel and
I’m a rock artist living in Nash-
ville, TN. That’s right, it’s not all
country here in Nashvegas.

I’ve been singing since I was

three years old and playing gui-
tar since Christmas of 1990. My
first EP, Fantasy World, was re-
leased on May 5, 2009.

I’m also a tech nerd. I’ve worked as a support technician, built computers
from parts, and programmed websites from scratch. My first blogging expe-
rience was in 2006 with my But I’m No Expert blog. In 2008, when I pub-
lished my music website, http://christopherjoel.com, I began digging through
WordPress and testing different plugins, methods, and themes, trying to find
the best, most productive way to use WordPress. I discovered tons of pl-
ugins and companion sites that can give you all the features of an expensive,
custom-designed website for free!

After hundreds of hours of research and tweaking, I decided to share what I

learned. As a musician, you should spend your time being an artist, not trying
solve tech issues and writing code. With this book, I’ll give you the tools and
knowledge to create your own website, saving you time and money.

You might be wondering: why not just use Myspace as my website? I com-
pare Myspace to renting an apartment; it’s yours to use, but you don’t own
it. Myspace is in business to make money for Myspace and to look out for its
own interests, not you and yours. While it is convenient, and still necessary
for musicians, it should only be one tool you use to interact with your fans.
6 YOUR BAND BLOG
As the saying goes, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

In 2009, Facebook became the most popular social network site on the inter-
net, which means some of the people you interact with are leaving Myspace.
Which begs the question, if Myspace is about connecting with fans, but fans
are leaving Myspace, wouldn’t it make sense to have a web presence where
people can find you regardless of what social network they prefer?

Consider this: your band has a brand identity, an image that people associate
with your band. Your website should enhance your brand, since it is what
people see of your band on the web. Wouldn’t it be better if what people see
of your band on the web was fully controlled by you? You can decide how
it looks, what it contains, and how it functions. Your brand identity will be
greatly enhanced by having a memorable domain name leading to a profes-
sional website. Many people are turned off when a band’s domain name leads
them to a slow, flash-filled Myspace page that takes forever to load and bar-
rages them with noise (movies and music players). That doesn’t make you
look better to a potential fan.

Hopefully, you see why using Myspace as your only web presence isn’t very
wise and would now like to create your own site. So you might be wondering,
with all the available options for creating a website, why choose WordPress?
 WHY WORDPRESS? 7

Chapter One
Why WordPress?

Free!

You can download the WordPress software from http://www.wordpress.org

for no charge. There’s nothing better than free for us starving artists.

Easy to install and configure

WordPress is proud to have a five-minute install. It really is a five-minute

process too, that’s not just some claim they make.

Simple to use

Why bother using something that makes your life more difficult? WordPress
has Dashboard where you can easily manage your blog posts, pages, plugins,
themes and the configuration of your website.

Easy to customize

Thousands of themes are available to change the look of your site. You can
even tweak the code of those themes to be exactly what you want, and it’s
easier than customizing your Myspace page!

Plugins

WordPress.org has a listing of plugins that add functions to your WordPress

blog. These plugins range from backup tools to music players to integrated
forums.
8 YOUR BAND BLOG
Options

Here are just a few of the options WordPress has for your blog:

•  Set a time and date to publish a posting (write now, publish later)
•  Save drafts of a posting
•  Make categories for posts
•  Find out who is talking about your posts
•  Add pages for things like your bio, show dates, etc.
•  Require registration before commenting (prevent spam)

Built-in spam filter

WordPress comes with a spam filter plugin that prevents spam comments.
Nothing looks more unprofessional than having someone offer male en-
hancement products on your blog postings!

Multiple contributors

With WordPress, content can be contributed from multiple people, like each
of your band members. Or your manager. Or your sister. Whoever, it’s up to
you.

Now that you know some of the advantages to using WordPress, let’s cover
some basics about websites, just so we’re all on the same page.
 WEBSITE BASICS 9

Chapter Two
Website Basics

You need three things in order to have a website: a domain name, a web
server, and HTML files. A domain name is the easy-to-remember address to
get to a web server, for example: http://cnn.com. A web server is a computer
that shares HTML files. HTML is the language that web browsers use to dis-
play websites, so HTML files contain HTML code that describes the different
parts of a website. First things first, let’s get you a server.

Hosts and Web hosts are companies that provide you space on one of their servers to
Servers store your website’s files. There are bazillions of web hosts out there; you just
need to choose one that fits your needs and budget. WordPress has become
popular enough that many web hosts have WordPress already installed on
their servers, so you won’t need to manually set it up. Here are some popular
web hosts with WordPress already installed:

•  Godaddy.com
•  Bluehost.com
•  Dreamhost.com
•  MediaTemple.com
•  HostICan.com
•  LaughingSquid.com

While you could just create a blog for free on WordPress.com, they do not
allow you to install plugins. They also charge for things like a domain name,
which is necessary for your professional image. It’s typically less expensive
to buy a web hosting account and install the WordPress software, and you get
the advantage of installing plugins.

I’m not going to recommend any specific web host, but I use Godaddy. I’m
satisfied with their service and they are a large company, so I doubt they will
go out of business any time soon. That being said, here are useful tips for
selecting a web host:
10 YOUR BAND BLOG
How much does it cost?

Really pay attention to the costs of hosting plans. Many vendors will adver-
tise rates like $6.95 per month, but that’s only if you prepay for a year or two,
it’s actually $10.95 to pay month-to-month. Either price isn’t bad, but I’d
rather know upfront how much it’s going to cost me rather than being tricked
into a price that I can’t afford.

How much space do they give you?

Honestly, anything more than 5 GB is plenty, but most hosts will give you
50-100 GB and some even offer unlimited storage. Unless you’re serving
two-hour streaming movies from your site, I doubt you’ll ever get past 5 GB,
even with years of song catalogs available for download.

How much bandwidth/file transfer do they allow per month?

Bandwidth, also referred to as file transfer, refers to how much data is down-
loaded from your site. If you have lots of large files, you’ll use more band-
width. In general, WordPress sites don’t require much bandwidth, but if you
get a huge surge of traffic (like after a concert) your bandwidth needs may go
up, so it’s best to plan ahead.

Do you get a free domain name with your account?

Some plans offer a free domain name with the purchase of a hosting plan.
We’ll talk more about domain names in “Domain Names” on page 12.

Do they have PHP (4.3 or greater) and MySQL (4.0 or greater)

installed on their servers?

If you don’t know what these are, don’t worry, you don’t really need to know.
You’ll need both for WordPress though. Most hosts already have these in-
stalled.

What is their uptime guarantee?

This refers to how often service interruptions occur. Most hosts have an up-
time guarantee of 99% or better, which means your website could be unavail-
able for more than three days and you won’t be able to request a credit to
your account for the down time. It would be rare to find one that has 100%,
but more common to see at least 99.7% or so.

Do they have a 24/7 support service?

You definitely want help if something goes wrong, and having to wait for the
8 to 5 shift is unacceptable. You might end up chatting with someone from
 WEBSITE BASICS 11
Bangalore, but that’s better than having your site down while your fans are
trying to reach it.

Bonus
Do you get free privacy registration for your domain (if a do-
Questions main comes with the account)?

Privacy for domain registration allows your domain name to be registered

without showing your private information on the public registers. This ould
be really important if you did become well-known and didn’t want your home
address out there for all the world to see.

Do they have any website promotion packages?

Some hosts give you credits for ad programs like Google Adwords, Face-
book, MSN, etc. These can be very useful credits to have when you release a
new album, video, or an opening slot on a tour that’s worth publicizing.

Do they support streaming audio and videos (Quicktime,

RealPlayer, etc)?

While you can host your files on Youtube, Vimeo, or some other service, hav-
ing more than one streaming option is wise planning.

What kind of connection do they have to the rest of the Inter-

net?

This will typically be a connection that starts with OC, like OC48, OC96,
etc. This just denotes the speed of their connection to the rest of the Internet,
the higher the OC number the better. If they have a fast connection, people
will be able to load your site faster which makes you look more professional.

Do they have backup systems in place?

This goes back to making sure your site is there when you need it. A lack of
preparedness on their part means they aren’t worth dealing with; find some-
one else. A good host should have a backup generator for power outages,
UPS systems on their server racks (those are battery backup power supplies),
and they should be backing up the servers. If something goes wrong, you
want to know that your web host will have it solved pronto and will keep
your site up and running.
12 YOUR BAND BLOG
Domain Choosing a Domain Name
Names Choosing a domain name isn’t really that hard. Something like yourband.
com is exactly what you want. The shortest domain name you can get that is
related to your band is the best option. The hard part is finding a domain name
that’s not already taken. Unfortunately, there is a market for selling domain
names, so people have begun registering domain names with the intention of
selling them to people who will use them. Hopefully, your preferred domain
name is unique enough to not be profitable for anyone other than you.

Domaintools.com is a great place to start. Go to the site, type in the domain

name you want, and it will either give you all the info on the current owner
or say it can’t find any info on that domain.

If Domain Tools can’t find any info on your preferred domain name, then
register that domain name with a domain name registrar.

If Domain Tools gives information about the domain, then that name is al-
ready in use. Try a variation like yourbandmusic.com, yourbandrocks.com,
yourband.net, or even yourband.us. Keep trying until you find something
relatively short that is related to your band.

Buying Your Domain Name

To buy your domain name, you’ll need a domain name registrar. A domain
name registrar is simply a site that is officially allowed to sell domain names.
Many web hosts are also domain registrars, so its often easiest to do ev-
erything in one place. It can be cheaper to use separate vendors, so explore
your options and choose accordingly. Here’s just a few options for domain
registrars:

•  Godaddy
•  Network Solutions
•  RegSelect
•  Registrar
•  Register
 INSTALL WORDPRESS 13

Chapter Three
Install WordPress

While WordPress is famous for it’s five-minute install, you will need to do
some preparation beforehand. Now that you have your web host and your do-
main name, you’ll need to install some applications before installing Word-
Press on your website.

Applications FTP
FTP stands for file transfer protocol and it enables you to move files from one
place to another, like from your computer to a web server. There are quite a
few FTP applications; here are some popular free and paid options:

Free options:

OS X
•  CyberDuck - Easy to use, my personal favorite.
•  Filezilla - Made by the same people who make Firefox. A great ap-
plication, but a bit harder to use than Cyberduck, in my opinion.

Windows
•  Filezilla - The most commonly used FTP application for Windows.
•  FTP Explorer - Boasts that it’s the original “Explorer-style” FTP cli-
ent.

Paid options:

OS X
•  Fetch - Has a 15-day free trial and is very easy to use.
•  Transmit - Has tons of options and is one of the more popular FTP
clients for Mac.
14 YOUR BAND BLOG
Windows
•  S
 mart FTP - Has a 30-day free trial. Looks like it’s well-maintained
and improved often.
•  WS_FTP - Also has a 30-day free trial.

Compression Utilities
Compression utilities compress files to take up less space on your hard drive.
They also decompress files so you can work with them. There are many com-
pression utilities out there, but the two most common are:

•  PC - Winzip
•  Mac - StuffIt Expander

There are free versions and paid versions of each of these applications. The
paid versions offer more functionality than you really need, so just download
the free version.

Text Editor
Both Windows and Mac come with a text editor, so you don’t need to down-
load and install anything. If you use Windows, you’ll use the Notepad ap-
plication, which can be found by clicking the Start button, then going to All
Programs > Accessories. If you use a Mac, you’ll use the Text Editor appli-
cation, which can be found by opening Finder, then going to the Applications
folder.

Web Browser
Windows and Mac each have a built-in web browser. For Windows, it’s In-
ternet Explorer, for Mac, it’s Safari. You may also use another browser such
as Firefox, Opera, or Chrome. None of these has any advantage over the oth-
ers when installing or working with Wordpress, so use whichever you prefer.

Once you have all of the above applications installed and ready to use, you’ll
Create Your need to create your database. The instructions will vary based on your web
host, so I suggest reading up on your host’s instructions on how to create a
MySQL new database.
Database For those who choose Godaddy as your web host, here’s how to do it:
Go to godaddy.com and log into your account (the login boxes are at the top).
 INSTALL WORDPRESS 15

From the Hosting menu, click the My Hosting Account link.

On the row of your hosting account, click the Manage Account link.

When the Hosting Control Center page has loaded, expand the fourth section
called Databases and click the MySQL button.
16 YOUR BAND BLOG

Click the Create Database button in the top right corner of the MySQL page.

On this form, you create, describe, and assign options to your new database.
In the Description field, type something like “wp-yourbandname database”.
This will remind you what this particular database is for later.

Create a username and put it in the MySQL Database/User Name field. This
doubles as the name of your database.

Tip: For better secu- Invent a password and put in the Enter New Password field, then type the
rity, choose a pass- same password in the Confirm New Password field.
word that is at least
8 characters long and An example of a good, strong password is: “f8u#Sh!zzl3s”, that’s “fauxshiz-
includes letters, num- zles” encoded as a strong password.
bers, and symbols.
FYI, Godaddy’s password machine does not allow the following characters
in your password:

•  question mark (?)

•  space ( )
•  caret (^)
•  single quote (‘)
•  double quote (“)
•  colon (:)
•  backslash (\)
•  dollar sign ($)
•  ampersand (&)
 INSTALL WORDPRESS 17
•  greater than (>)
•  less than (<)
•  tilde (~)
•  semi-colon (;)
•  accent (`)

On the right side of the form, choose MySQL version 5.0.

Write down all these settings, you’ll need them when installing WordPress.

Click the OK button at the bottom of the page.

When you’re back to the MySQL page, you’ll notice under the Status column
that it says Pending Setup for the database you just created. It will take a few
minutes for the database to get set up. In the meantime, let’s create an FTP
user and upload the Wordpress software.

Create an Before uploading anything to your web host, make sure you have an FTP
FTP User user created. On Godaddy, log into your account and go to your Hosting
Control Panel.

Under Settings, select Manage FTP Users.

18 YOUR BAND BLOG

On this page, you should already have an FTP user created. If so, take note
of the username, then click the Change Password link to make the password
something you can more easily remember. Write down both the FTP user-
name and your new password, because you’ll need them later.

If you haven’t created an FTP user already, click the Add FTP User button
in the lower right. On the Add FTP User page, fill in your desired username,
password, and set the Path to < hosting root >, then click the Save link to save
your new user. The page should refresh to show your new user in the list.
 INSTALL WORDPRESS 19
Five-Minute
Install

Now that you’ve created your FTP user, go to http://www.wordpress.org.

You’ll need to download the WordPress software to install it on your server.
Click the orange Download button on the main menu or the blue Download
WordPress button; they both take you to the same page.

Click the Download Word-

Press button on the Download
page and it should prompt you
to save a zip file.

Choose a place (like your

desktop) to save this file,
click the OK button, and al-
low the file to download.

Once the zip file is downloaded, right-click (control+click for Macs) on the
file and choose to open it with your compression utility. Save the files to the
desktop. Your compression utility may do this automatically for you, just be
sure to pay attention to where it saves the uncompressed files, so you can find
them.
20 YOUR BAND BLOG

Find your files (they should be in a

folder called “wordpress”). Inside
that folder is a file named wp-con-
fig-sample.php.

Rename this file to wp-config.php.

Open the file in your text editor. Change the following:

1. Replace “putyourdbnamehere” with your databases’s name
2. Replace “usernamehere” with the username you selected for your
database
3. Replace “yourpasswordhere” with the password you made up for
your database.

Save the file, but don’t close it yet. The last piece of info we need is the host
name of the database. Go back to the MySQL page on your web host and
refresh the page. If the database you created earlier still says Pending Setup,
wait about ten minutes and check it again.

If your database says that it’s set up, click the Edit button (it has a pencil on
it).

Copy the host name, then return to your wp-config.php file. Replace “local-
host” with the host name you copied. Save your wp-config.php file and close
your text editor.

Now open your FTP app. You’ll need to tell it which server to connect to, in
this case, your web server. Check your application’s Help menu if you don’t
 INSTALL WORDPRESS 21
know how to get it configured. Once you’ve gotten it configured, log into
your account on your web host. Upload all the files and folders inside the
wordpress folder onto your server. Don’t upload the folder itself.

Once they finish uploading, open your web browser and go to:
http://yourdomainname.com/wp-admin/install.php

Type the title of your blog (like your band name) in the Blog Title field and
type your email address in the Your email field. Leave that box checked and
click the Install WordPress button.

Write down your temporary username and password and click the Log In
button.

Log in using your temporary username and password.

22 YOUR BAND BLOG

Chapter Four
Configure WordPress

Dashboard

Once you’re logged in, the first thing you’ll see is the WordPress Dashboard.
Dashboard shows the recent activity on your blog such as comments, posts,
comments awaiting approval, incoming links from other sites, etc.

Now that WordPress is installed and you’ve logged in using your temporary
username and password, add yourself as a user and make yourself an admin
of the site. Expand the Users menu by clicking on the arrow on the Users
button. Click the Add New link.

 CONFIGURE WORDPRESS 23

Fill out all the info and be sure to change your Role to Administrator. Click
the Add User button when finished.

Settings Menu
General

Now that you’re set up as a user, we’ll take a look at some of the settings for
your new site. I won’t go through every option available, I’ll only discuss the
ones I recommend you change from the default settings. Find more detailed
information about the settings on WordPress’s website: http://codex.word-
press.org/Administration_Panels.

Expand the Settings menu and click the General link.

Type your band’s name into the the Blog Title field.
24 YOUR BAND BLOG
Check the Membership box for Anyone Can Register. You want as much in-
teraction with your fans as possible; this allows your readers to comment on
your blog by registering.

Change the time zone to match your location. WordPress uses Coordinated
Universal Time (mysteriously abbreviated as UTC) for time settings, check
the chart below for the American UTC codes:

Time Zone UTC Code

Atlantic UTC-4
Eastern UTC-5
Central UTC-6
Mountain UTC-7
Pacific UTC-8
Alaskan UTC-9

Change the Week Starts On drop menu to Sunday (unless you prefer to start
your week on Monday or some other day), then hit the Save Changes button
at the bottom to save all the changes on the General Settings page.
 CONFIGURE WORDPRESS 25
Writing

Expand the Settings menu and click the Writing link. This section contains
the preferences for writing blog posts.

The Size of the Post Box option is for how big you want the editing box to
be when you add a new post. The default is 10, but I prefer mine a little bit
bigger, so I set it to 20.

Check the box for converting emoticons like :) into graphics.

If you plan to post entries from your iPhone or an application on your com-
puter, check the XML-RPC box. That tells WordPress to allow other applica-
tions to post to your blog.
26 YOUR BAND BLOG
The Update Services box is a list of sites that get informed when you post
new content on your blog. This will help people know you are adding posts
to your blog. Start with this list:

http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://cullect.com/feed/ping
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.wasalive.com/ping/
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://blogping.unidatum.com/RPC2/

Click the Save Changes button.

Reading

Expand the Settings menu and click the Reading link.

What do you want people to see when they first hit your site? If it’s your blog
page, then leave the first setting under Reading alone. If it’s another page
(like shows or your bio), then come back here after you’ve created that page
and make it your Front page diplays option.

Hit the Save Changes button if you made any changes.

 CONFIGURE WORDPRESS 27
Discussion

Expand the Settings menu and click the Discussion link, which contains op-
tions for how people interact with your blog. These are some of the most im-
portant settings because you want to allow interaction, but not allow anarchy
(unless that’s your thing).


Default Article Settings

“Check to notify any blogs linked to/from the article” - Check. Sites you link
to in a blog post will be notified that you linked to their article. Sometimes,
the other blogger will link back to your blog, which improves your search
engine ranking.

“Allow link notification from other blogs” - Check. This tells you when other
bloggers have linked to one of your postings. It is considered polite practice
in the blogging world to link to one of their blog posts in return.

“Allow people to post comments on the article” - Check. This is all about
interaction. Give your fans/readers a way to express their opinions and give
you feedback.

Other Comment Settings

“Comment author must fill out name and email” - Check. This prevents bots
(programs that scour the Internet leaving spam messages on unprotected
blogs) from leaving spam messages in your comments. This isn’t the only
tool to help fight that, but it certainly helps.

“Users must be registered and logged in to comment” - Check. This is yet

another tool to fight spam messages and helps you know who’s leaving com-
ments.

“Automatically close comments...” - Uncheck. Just because a blog entry

is old, doesn’t mean that a fan wouldn’t have something insightful to offer
about it. Leave as many opportunities to interact as possible.
28 YOUR BAND BLOG
“Enable threaded (nested) comments ___ levels deep” - Check. If you have a
popular article and people start commenting on each others’ comments (this
is a very good thing), this option will help keep things organized. I would
suggest no more than 5 levels deep.

“Break comments...” - Check. Set the first box to something a little more rea-
sonable like 20. Change the second option to “first”, then leave the last option
as “older”. This option will only show 20 comments per page and any further
comments will be given a separate page other readers can visit to continue
reading. Putting comments in chronological order allows people to read all
the comments and follow the discussion.

E-mail Me Whenever

“Anyone posts a comment” - Check, unless you’re insanely popular and don’t
want to see each and every comment. This goes back to interaction - seeing
every comment is a good way to interact with your fans/readers.

“When a comment is held for moderation” - Check. Usually, comments held

for moderation have some characteristic that make it a potential spam, so
check these out. If it’s a valid comment, you can approve it and allow it on
the site.

Before A Comment Appears

“An administrator must always approve the comment” - Uncheck. The more
popular you get, the more comments you’ll get, and trying to police them all
will drive you crazy and take away from your time to work on music.

“Comment author must have a previously approved comment” - Check. This

is the easier-to-manage version of the setting above, since you only have to
approve the author’s first comment.

Comment Moderation - Leave this set at 2. Spammers like to put lots of links
in their comment posts, so this setting will help catch them. If a fan/reader
posts several links inside a comment, it will be held for moderation, you’ll
get an email about it, and you can approve or disapprove their comment.
 CONFIGURE WORDPRESS 29
The big box underneath is for any words or websites that, if someone uses
them in a comment, would trigger WordPress to hold the comment for mod-
eration and notify you about it. If you’re running a G-rated site, this would be
a good place to list every dirty word you can imagine, just in case someone
gets rowdy or tries to prank your blog.

Comment Blacklist - This is very similar to the above option, but marks the
comment as spam instead of holding it for moderation.

Avatars

Avatar display - Select “Show Avatars”. Many people already have an online
avatar they use for leaving comments on blogs, and allowing them to be dis-
played with their comments is usually harmless.

Maximum Rating - You can choose the rating of the avatars that you’ll allow.
If you’re running a G-rated blog, then you can choose to only allow G-rated
avatars. These ratings are very similar to movie ratings, so you’re probably
already familiar with them.

Default Avatar - This is what users will get on your blog, if they don’t already
have an avatar of their own. Choose the one you prefer; I use the default,
Mystery Man.

Click the Save Changes button at the bottom to save all your settings for
Discussions.
30 YOUR BAND BLOG

Media

Expand the Settings menu and click the Media link. This section deals with
the pictures you add to your site.

Leave the Thumbnail size at 150x150, it’s a good size.

Leave the Medium size set at 300x300.

Make a note of the large size dimensions. Once you’ve loaded your theme,
you’ll want to come back and change this size to match.

When you come back to make changes, please notice that these options are
the maximum sizes, not actual dimensions. For instance, if the content col-
umn on your blog is 500 pixels wide, and you want large-sized pictures, then
set the maximum width on the Large Size to 500. The height will be auto-
matically determined in order to keep the pictures proportional.

At this point, you’re done with the Settings menu. There isn’t anything to
change in the Privacy or Miscellaneous settings, and we’ll configure Perma-
links later.

Pages
Pages are sort of like blog posts, but they aren’t organized by date and are
changed infrequently. Most pages are information like the About Us page,
Links, Photos, Contact Me, etc. For your band site, you’ll need to make pag-
es that make sense for a band, like Bio, Photos, Music, and Shows. Since
every artist/band calls them something different and has different needs, I’ll
just use my site as an example of what you are able to do with pages.
 CONFIGURE WORDPRESS 31

By default, WordPress creates a page titled About. Most bloggers use this
page as a bio, telling who they are and the blog’s purpose. In this case, change
About to Bio, then add the other music-appropriate pages.

To edit the About page, expand the Pages menu and click the Edit link.
32 YOUR BAND BLOG

Put your mouse near the title of the page and, just like on the users panel, an
Edit link will appear underneath the page’s title; click on Edit.

The Page Editor looks very similar to the Blog Post Editor that you’ll see
later and uses many of the same tools.

Up at the top, there’s a box with the word About in it. This is the page’s title.
Change that title to be whatever you want to call your Bio page (I’m using
Bio). Below that is a larger box for editing the content of the page. Here is
where you will paste in your bio. Edit the text to your liking.

Once your bio is on the page and formatted to your liking, scroll to the bottom
of the page and uncheck the Allow Comments and Allow Pings checkboxes
under the Discussion section. This way, you will only receive comments and
pings for blog posts, not pages.
 CONFIGURE WORDPRESS 33

When you’re finished editing your Bio page, click the Update Page button in
the Publish section on the far right side of the page. This will save your edits
and publish the page immediately. Now that you’ve edited an existing page,
I’ll show you how to add a page from scratch.

To add a new page to your blog, expand the Pages menu and click on the Add
New link. Type the title of your page in the field at the top. In the content
field, enter what you would like people to see when they open this page.
34 YOUR BAND BLOG

Underneath the page content field are two boxes: Custom Fields and Discus-
sion. Custom Fields is for putting specific information on the page, which is
usually something that can show up as part of your theme or the page tem-
plate (more on that in a bit). Unless you know what you’re doing, you can
just bypass the Custom Field section altogether.

In the Discussion section, uncheck the Allow Comments and Allow Pings
checkboxes, just like on the Bio page.

Attributes

On the right side of the Page Editor

is a box called Attributes, which con-
tains several options for your pages.

Parent

The first attribute is the parent page.

This refers to how pages are orga-
nized. Parent pages are higher in
the hierarchy than the child pages.
For example, you could have a Me-
dia page that has three child pages:
Music, Videos, and Photos. They are
all media, but let’s say, for the sake
of the example, you wanted them
on separate pages. When you make
the Media page, it’s parent would be
the Main Page. When you make the
Music page, it’s parent would be the
Media page. The Videos and Photos pages would each have the Media page
as their parent page also.

For a band site, you probably won’t require enough pages to use this organi-
zation, so create each page with the parent as Main Page.
 CONFIGURE WORDPRESS 35
Template

The template refers to a feature that some themes use to give more options
for how your pages are displayed. If you pick a theme that has templates for
your pages, you’ll see them listed in this drop menu. If not, just leave it set
to the default value.

Order

If you have a specific order in which you’d like your pages to display, use this
box to put them in order. The ordering starts with zero and works it’s way up,
so the first page on your menu would be #0, the second page is #1, third page
is #2, and so on. If you don’t put a number here, it will order your pages by
when they were created.

Publish

The last section on the

Page Editor panel is the
Publish section.

The Save Draft but-

ton will save the page,
but not publish it. This
is really good if you
don’t have your content
nailed down yet and
want to come back to it later.

The Preview button shows what the page will look like once it’s published.
This is very handy for testing the placement of graphics or videos.

The Status field shows you the status of your page: published, draft, etc.

The Visibility field shows you whether you’ve marked the page as private,
draft, or public.

The Publish field lets you set a time and date when the page will be published
for the public to view. This is a very handy option for scheduling when posts
get published, but Pages should be published immediately, so don’t change it
from the default setting of immediately.

Fill out all the appropriate fields for your new page and click the Publish but-
ton when finished. Repeat this process for each new page.
36 YOUR BAND BLOG
Customizing Themes
WordPress Now that your site is installed and you have created pages, the next thing to
do is work on the look. You could choose to bust out your design skills and
make it look exactly the way you want, or you could opt for the easier route
and find an existing theme to customize. It’s much easier to tweak an existing
theme than to make your own. There are literally thousands and thousands
of WordPress themes out there, most available for free, and you can save
countless hours by simply choosing a theme that resembles how you would
like your site to appear. Unfortunately, there are thousands and thousands of
existing themes out there, so finding one you like may take a while. Alter-
nately, you could hire a designer to custom design a theme just for you, but
it is expensive.

While I can’t tell you what theme to download, I can give you some helpful
tips on finding a theme.

Free or Custom-made?

The first thing you’ll need to decide is: do I want a free theme or one custom
designed for my site? While the vast majority of us will probably opt for the
free one, some may want their site to stand out or have custom features that
can’t be found on free themes. There are plenty of options for both camps
and either way, Google is your friend.

Pay more attention to the layout than the colors

By layout, I mean where things are located on the page. Do you like where
the columns are located? Should the menu be in that spot? Do you want the
menu above your logo? Below it? What about having a column on the left,
or right, or both?

Most people don’t really notice these particulars when viewing a website, but
its vital for this part of designing your site. Some people only see the colors
and will pass on a great layout because it’s purple, not black or brightly col-
ored instead of muted. Borders, text, and backgrounds can be changed to dif-
ferent colors easily, but embedded pictures are more difficult to manipulate.

Widget-Friendly = Good

I’ll go over more info about widgets in “Widgets” on page 113, but for now, just
understand that being able to use widgets is a good thing.

Customization Options

Some themes have options built-in for customizing the theme, which saves
you time.
 CONFIGURE WORDPRESS 37
Documentation

Find a theme whose developer has his/her own website, or possibly a site just
for the theme itself. This will be important if you need questions answered
while customizing.

SEO-Optimized

We’ll learn more about SEO in “HOW I GOT TO #1” on page 111, but if your
theme says it’s SEO optimized, that will help you in the long run.

How to Install Themes

Automatically
To find a theme, expand the Appearance menu and click the Add New Themes
links which will allow you to search the WordPress Theme Directory.

You can search by features by checking the box(es) for the option(s) you
want, or if you know the name of the theme you want, just type it in the
Search field and hit the Search button.
38 YOUR BAND BLOG

When you’ve found a theme you like, click the Preview link to see an ex-
ample site using that theme. If you want more info about the theme, click the
Details link, which will expand to show you the author, rating, version, and
when it was last updated.

To install the theme, click the Install link under the name of the theme. Then
click the Install Now button on the confirmation window.
 CONFIGURE WORDPRESS 39
Manually

You can also find WordPress

themes by searching Google for
WordPress Themes, which will
turn up at least 32 million results
(no exaggeration). To install a
theme that you’ve downloaded,
open your FTP application and
connect to your web host.

Upload your newly download-

ed theme folder into this folder
on your web host: /wp-content/
themes. If you downloaded more
than one theme, upload each one to
this same folder.

Using Themes
To use a theme on your site, expand the Appearance menu and click the
Themes link.

At the top of the themes page, you’ll see the current theme. Any other themes
you’ve installed will appear on this page as well.
40 YOUR BAND BLOG

You can preview your site with any theme by clicking the Preview link. If
you like what you see, you can activate it by clicking the “Activate Theme
Name” link in the top right corner of the preview window. You can also acti-
vate a theme by clicking the Activate link on the Manage Themes page.

Keep trying out themes until you find one that you think will work for your
site.

HTML, CSS, & PHP

HTML is an acronym for Hyper-Text markup Language. This is the language
the Internet is built on. Almost every website you see uses HTML.

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. In essence, CSS is the code that tells
the page what to look like. All your themes will have at least one CSS file
included in the download.

PHP stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. WordPress was written in PHP.
It allows easy interactivity with the database you set up earlier and is used by
many sites on the Internet.

You don’t need to know these three languages in order to customize a theme,
but it does help considerably. I debated writing some tutorials about these
three here, but frankly, each would require a separate book to explain prop-
erly. I recommend going to a local bookstore or Amazon.com and finding
some books about these languages if you really want to get into them. Since
you’re a musician and you bought this book, I’d bet you’d rather spend your
time playing and writing than learning web development languages.
 CONFIGURE WORDPRESS 41
In that case, check out http://codex.wordpress.org, especially the sections
about Blog Design and Site Development. The Codex site is an explanation
of the parts of WordPress and how they work. There’s a lot of helpful infor-
mation there about the parts of most WordPress themes.

Another good source is the documentation for the theme. Hopefully you
chose a theme with its own site and can go there to ask questions.

Want More?
Thanks for reading these sample pages of Your Band Blog. The rest of book
walks you through every detail of configuring WordPress for the best re-
sults, what plugins to use for your band, what other websites integrate with
your WordPress site, how to improve your search engine rankings, and much
more! Click the Add to Cart button below and start building your band’s
website today!