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How I Use Wordpress to Set Up Niche Sites
July 09, 2005
Okay, here's the post I promised Dave.
First, though, a disclaimer. I am NOT a Wordpress expert. I started using Wordpress for blogging (not this blog, though, which is a Typepad blog) and then realized what a wonderful content management system it is. I now have a bunch of sites that I would call "niche sites" which use Wordpress as a CMS.
When do I NOT use Wordpress? When I'm building any site where I will need individual pages to be different. While Wordpress is extremely flexible, it's difficult to make any particular post page different from all the other post pages.
As you can imagine, I do not use any web host that doesn't offer a one-click install of Wordpress. I use two hosts right now: Dreamhost and Site5 (I highly recommend both of them). Dreamhost offers it's own one-click install of Wordpress, while Site5 uses Fantastico. Site5's install of Wordpress is seriously seriously fast, by the way. (But Dreamhost has one of the funniest monthly newsletters I've ever read. Update: I just found out about Dreamhost's special promo and have posted about it here.)
In order to make your Wordpress sites look "un-blog-like", just decide what features you don't want included. Everything that shows up on your site can be found in the individual template pages in your theme. If you've never messed with your theme before, click on the Presentation tab and then click on "theme editor". You'll see each of the templates for the different types of pages there (main or home page, single or post page, page (if you're using WP 1.5+) and archives), and all the includes (sidebar(s), header and footer). Just comment out anything you don't want.
Getting Coding Help
Anytime I have a problem, I head straight to either the Codex or the WP support forums. I've become very familiar with the template tag pages at the Codex. Another very good source of information is the Wordpress Theme Guide from UrbanGiraffe. If you like to have things in print in front of you, you can download a pdf format of the guide for free, or order a printed version.
The Codex will also guide you through things like setting up a different template for certain category pages. For example, I have one site where I have Adsense showing on the sidebar for certain categories only.
I'm also lucky, because I can always shoot a quick question to Teli: she's my personal Wordpress guru, although I try hard not to abuse the privilege!
The Home Page
To customize your site's home page, make the changes to the html and php coding in the main page template. The text you add will be static text - for example, a welcome message or a short article that tells people about your site. You can insert banners if you want, or Google Adsense. All these things stay put and won't change until you change the template again.
Right before the section where the posts display on the main page, I usually add a H2 title that reads something like "Our Latest Articles". I will usually display only an excerpt, with a link that says "Read more".
To customize the display of your posts, you will need to play around with the php coding. On one of my sites I have a "test" folder in which I've installed Wordpress. I upload different themes that I'm working with and then play around with the php code to get what I want. I've found this to be really helpful because I'm quite new to php code.
I will sometimes remove the date from my posts, and I always change the things that show up in the post-meta line that follows each post (usually I will just have the permalink and the category showing there).
Or you can have your main page not display any posts at all. You could link to your individual posts through a "Recent Articles" section on your sidebar, or indirectly through the category pages that you list on your sidebar. Because you can use php includes, you can have a different set of sidebars for your main page than you use elsewhere on your site.
The Sidebar(s)
Next I fiddle with the sidebar(s). For example, you may not want to have "Recent Posts" showing, although usually what I do is change it to read "Recent Articles". I'll often stick a newsletter subscribe box in the sidebar, too. If you don't want something there, you can just comment out the code for it. One thing I always keep somewhere on each site, though, is a link to Wordpress. It's only fair. If you want it out of the way, you can always stick it in your footer.
As I've already mentioned, you can use php code on all your template pages, which means you can do things like upload an alternate sidebar and include it using a php include (which is how I differentiate my different category pages).
The Individual (Post) Pages
It's helpful when using Wordpress as a CMS to think of your posts as articles, rather than posts. Just like writing a regular article for a normal webpage, you can use html within your posts. You can assign special attributes to elements in your stylesheet and then use "div" tags within your posts to format specific items.
The only thing that you really can't do is to change the layout and other non-post elements on any particular individual post page. For example, if you are using Adsense on your sidebars for all your post pages, but for this particular page you don't want Adsense, you won't be able to go and eliminate the Adsense from the sidebars. (Note: this is as far as I've been able to figure out, that is. If there IS a way to make your individual post pages different, please leave a comment for me.)
When you end up in a situation like that, you can either use the "page" function in Wordpress (but you'll have to make the changes you want directly to your "page" template first), or for maximum flexibility, you can convert your Wordpress theme into a straight html template and create your different pages using your html editor. Upload these pages onto your site and add the links to your sidebar.
Cosmetic Changes
Wordpress themes are CSS-based, so you can do a ton of stuff to change the look of your site by making changes to the stylesheet.
I have a number of different themes that I use regularly, and I've customized them to the point where usually all I have to do is decide whether I want a two-column or three-column layout, make cosmetic changes by fiddling with colors in the stylesheet, make my header, and then upload everything to my site.
Plugins
Wordpress plugins are wonderful little things that make life a whole lot easier. For example, there's an Amazon plugin that lets you quickly and easily insert Amazon links (with your affiliate code) anywhere you want in a post. If you think of something that you'd really like to be able to do with Wordpress, it's definitely worth heading over to Google and doing a search for "thing you want to do" plus "Wordpress plugin".
If you've never used a plugin with Wordpress, it's very easy. Usually all you have to do is upload the plugin to the Plugin folder (found in the WP-Content folder). When you login to your site, go to the Plugin page and activate the plugin there. Additional instructions for individual plugins can be found either at the site where you download the plugin, or in the readme file when you unzip your download package.
Optimizing Your Site
I also spent a bit of time searching for things that optimize a Wordpress site for the search engines. Some of the things are just common SEO practices, like using your targeted keywords in your posts. As I mentioned in my review of OptiNiche: A Guide to Optimizing WordPress Niche Blogs, up until I got a copy of Teli's ebook package, I had a laundry list of various plugins that I used to do the optimization work as best as possible. Now I just go through Teli's ebook to make sure I've got everything covered, and use the OptiNiche plugin that's included in the package.
So that's how I use Wordpress to create niche sites, in a nutshell. Well, okay, maybe this post is a little bit larger than a nutshell. Okay, a whole lot larger than a nutshell. But really, it's easy once you get the hang of it.
But please, if you do have Wordpress questions, check out the Codex or the Wordpress forums. I can say with a whole lot of certainty that I'm NOT the person to ask about Wordpress and php coding.
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Posted by BJ at 11:09 PM in Niche Marketing | Permalink
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Comments
Its a start I suppose. I was hoping for more explicit instructions. A URL to an example site would be most instructive.
Posted by: Dave | Jul 10, 2005 1:57:40 PM
Geez, Dave - I thought those were pretty good instructions!
But if you want to see some example sites, probably the best thing to do is take a look at how Darren Rowse (www.problogger.net) does it. His sites are definitely niche blogs, but they really are the same thing as a niche website. If you go to his About me page, he has links to some of his sites there. His blog is also a great read, full of a lot of news about the blogging world and great ways to utilize blogging software and RSS feeds.
Posted by: BJ | Jul 10, 2005 4:13:41 PM
Hey BJ,
You caught be blushing more than once reading that article :) - thank you for the mentions!
"For example, if you are using Adsense on your sidebars for all your post pages, but for this particular page you don't want Adsense, you won't be able to go and eliminate the Adsense from the sidebars"
Actually, you can exclude the AdSense (or any other content for that matter).
For instance, the example you've given above - you have AdSense running in the sidebar, however, you don't want it to show when viewing a particular single post - correct?
In that case, you would want to wrap the AdSense code in a bit of PHP:
[?php if(!is_single('#')) { ?]
AdSense code here
[?php } ?]
Replace the '#' with the id number for the post you don't want to ads to be displayed for. The number is important, otherwise you won't be showing ads for any individual post pages (i.e. single pages).
P.S. I needed to use square brackets b/c typepad doesn't seem to like the HTML entities for the less/greater than brackets...
Hope that made some sense and helps out :)
Posted by: Teli | Jul 10, 2005 5:03:50 PM
Thanks for the very useful article! I'm looking forward to set up a few niche wordpress blogs and see how it goes. I have a bit of successful experience with static webpages myself, but found this article inspiring enough to start a wordpress empire!!, how have your results been thus far? I purchased optiniche and found it a wonderful nonfluff read, really interesting. Can't wait to start :D
Posted by: JonB | Sep 20, 2005 3:52:47 PM
Thanks, Jon. My blogs have been doing quite nicely, and I have also been thinking about blogging networks. I have 12 sites that use Wordpress in the works right now - the tricky bit is finding time to do it!
Posted by: BJ | Sep 20, 2005 5:14:33 PM
My blogs are doing well to, and you are right the time to keep up with them is the killer.
Posted by: Darryl Power | Apr 8, 2007 11:04:23 PM
What Dave means is he'd like you to build the site *for* him.
Posted by: Jeremy P | Apr 24, 2007 12:52:12 PM
