Lessons learnt from building my Platform – Part One

As I said I would let you learn from my trials and errors in my marketing, I figured as I struggled with setting up a new platform I would let you know how I did it and where I had issues.
I have in the past set up a blog on Blogger but everyone raves about WordPress so I decided to do it properly this time from the start.

Initially I followed Michael Hyatts video on setting up wordpress.org on Blue Host, using his affliate link so I actually set up my blog and posted my first blog. Hurrah! This cost about $147 for 3 years including the cost of my domain. Thank you Michael, I definitely could not have done it without you!
Michael Hyatt’s video on setting up WordPress
Once the excitement of having written my first blog on WordPress had died down, never having used WordPress before, I stared in slight horror at the WordPress dashboard. What is a plugin, widget, RSS feed, template etc??

So as I solve all these issues one by one I will post 😉

* Themes
I gather you can buy lots of templates that make your blog look great and have various plugins and stuff already set up. I am happy to do so but at this initial time I don’t want to rush in. Michael Hyatt is launching a template called ‘Get Noticed’ and I think I am going to buy that one as he setting it up for bloggers and platforms. However it is not ready for a few months yet. He has suggested some templates he likes such as Standard themes, woo themes, elegant themes but I dont want to rush in.

Hence I managed to load in the Free WordPress Twenty Twelve that is already installed.
Just go to dashboard and in the Appearances options below go to Theme and pick Twenty Twelve, and follow instructions, it is easy.

I am planning to go looking for an interim theme whilst Michael Hyatt gets his Get Noticed Theme out. Template Monster have some great ones but I am unsure of what they offer and I don’t know enough to understand half their jargon. I know Michael Hyatt used Standard theme before and got an increase in blog traffic and SEO stuff so I may switch over to that.

Standard WordPress theme

* Widgets
This was also a complete mystery to me!
Again under Dashboard, you just drag the widget you want to the right hand of the screen. If you want one on the very top, again in the Dashboard drag its position to the top.

However I could not get access to Aksimet (a free anti spam plug in) and Jetpack.

Both of these were in the WP theme and the dashboard but I couldn’t work out why they wouldn’t let me have the key. They kept asking me for my WordPress login name/password . These I have as obviously I had them set up, except it kept saying ‘This is incorrect’

.  What took me 2 days to realise is that they wanted a WORDPRESS.COM log in (an account I had not set up as I am on the WORDPRESS.ORG side which is self hosted. This was VERY ANNOYING until I figured that out. There was no help on this, purely frustration however much I googled, it was never made clear that I could see that I needed a wordpress.com account.

There will be more (many more I am sure) in this part of my blog!!