How to Blog - 1/8 Start Offline February 12, 2007
Posted by The Probabilist in : [Articles], Productivity, Technology, Blogging , 8 comments
Step 1 and 2 will be the briefest ones. In the first step of this blogging tutorial we’re going to install and use XAMPP and WordPress on your computer. XAMPP enables you to tweak your blog offline and WordPress is the most used blogging platform.
The reasons for starting with this step are several. Firstly, it’s a safe and free environment for you to try the WordPress platform. Secondly, you won’t annoy your readers with downtime, errors or continuous small tweaks every time you decide to implement a change. Thirdly, this reference comes with lots of suggestions so instead of having to upload new material constantly to your online host through an FTP application, you’re testing things out quickly on your own hard drive. And fourthly, whenever you upgrade WordPress to a new version, you’re better off first doing it on XAMPP to see how your plugins and design performs and what has to be done if everything doesn’t work the way they’re supposed to.
Installing XAMPP
First head over to the Apache friends site where you’ll find XAMPP for download. Choose your operating system, then XAMPP Lite and finally download either the .exe or .zip file. Extract it to your desired location (I’m going to refer to C:/xampplite - the installer will create the xampplite folder if you just choose C:).
- Go to the xampplite folder and run setup_xampp.bat (press any key when done)
- Run the xampp-control.exe file
- Click the start button for both Apache and MySql
- minimize the window when they both show ‘running’ on a green background
- Open your favourite browser and enter http://localhost/xampp/splash.php
- Choose your preferred language and click phpMyAdmin on the sidebar
- Enter the following exactly as described in the picture and click create:
Installing WordPress
- Go to the download section and get the latest version
- Extract the contents of the zip file into the htdocs folder
- The folder structure should be C:\xampplite\htdocs\wordpress
- Download this wp-config.txt file and put it in the wordpress folder
- Open it with notepad and rename it to wp-config.php
- Enter http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php in your browser
- Follow the guide and save the login details to where you keep your passwords
- Go to http://localhost/wordpress/wp-login.php to log in to the platform
If you’ve already been blogging online, download your existing online WordPress folder and replace it with the one in your htdocs folder to have an offline duplicate. The posts and categories will not be copied, you have to activate the plugins and you also need to tweak the sidebar widgets if you have any. Remember that you have to change the wp-config.php file to the one that works on the offline version. The login details for your offline version will stay the same.
If you’re an established blogger, then the rest of the advice in this article as well as part 2 will not be of much interest. Steps 3 to 8 on the other hand are for everyone.
Using WordPress
All right, now we’re all set up to start making the essential stuff that makes your blog efficient. First browse through your user interface and check out the different panels and be sure to go to the options panel and change whatever settings you want. Clicking on the (View site) button next to the title of your blog reveals the basic look of your blog and I bet you’re inclined to start off by applying a new theme (a look or style) to your blog to make it stand out. You’ll find lots of different themes available for download here, here, here, here, here and here. Choose one close to your taste knowing that you can tweak every single detail of the theme that you want later on. Extract the theme folder to the htdocs/wp-content/themes folder. Then just go to the presentation tab in the control panel, choose one from the available themes and view the site.
Here are the most important files you need to do know about. Notice that they are all in the folder for the specific theme you’ve selected, which means that the changes you make only apply to the theme you’ve chosen and using.
- style.css - Defines every border, colour, background, font, etc
- index.php - Defines what’s displayed when you write a post
- sidebar.php - Defines what’s found on the sidebar
- header.php - This is where the code starts and defines the head
- yourpage.php - You may want to create your own php files for pages
More on how to change and use these files is presented in step 4. For now, just take a look at these files with notepad and how they function, write a post to see how it comes out and visit the WordPress support section to browse through more detailed information.
Checklist for step 1 - starting offline
- Install XAMPP - Quicker, easier and more secure environment to tweak a blog
- Install WordPress - Self explanatory step
- Get a new theme - Take a good look around to find one that stands out
- Get familiar with the essential files - You’ll need to tweak these in the future
In the second step of this workshop (Friday, February the 16th), we’re getting a domain and a web host, configuring an ftp software to upload files to your host and putting the blog online. It will be quite a short post since the most essential tweaks and upgrades are presented starting next week.
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Tubetorial
Posted by The Probabilist in : [Links], Business, Entrepreneurship, Productivity, Blogging , 1 comment so far
Since February is a blog month at The Probabilist, I had to include this website to my weekly link descriptions. You can’t really clearly define if Tubetorial is a blog or a regular website due to its design, but one thing’s for sure - there’s plenty of practical information for bloggers as well as web 1.0 webmasters to improve the performance of their sites.
Tubetorial leverages and presents its information through tutorial videos. The screencast videos are commonly running at 4-8 minutes and are packed as series covering the most significant aspects of a given topic. For bloggers, the two most important ones are 7 Essential WordPress Hacks and How to Build a Profitable Home on the Web. The rest are easily found on the sidebar and are naturally useful to watch as well.
The videos are to the point, easy to follow and I like Chris, the narrator’s voice. Recently, Samantha also joined the team to give you vital legal information in the Blogger Law 101 tutorial of what you as a blogger should avoid doing, and what you can do when someone else does something to you that they shouldn’t have done.
In the end, it’s worth emphasizing that this isn’t a service strictly for bloggers, but serves as an outstanding reference of how-to for any publishing webmaster. So it doesn’t matter if you’re struggling with HTML, optimizing Google AdSense, building traffic, SEO or leveraging info products, tubetorial is a site worth checking out to start with.
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