It’s now time to log into your new blog, choose a design theme/template, and set your new blog up in preparation for adding it’s first content. While the screen shots here are from WordPress if you chose a different blogging platform you will still need to do most of these basic set-up procedures and it shouldn’t be difficult to determine where you need to go from your blog’s set-up panel.

For WordPress, once the instalation is complete, you will be provided with a link to your new blog’s administration panel, a WordPress User ID and a WordPress password. Click on the link to your user panel and you will see the screen below:

Enter the user ID and password provided and hit Log In. Once you’ve logged in you will not need to log in again unless you log out.

Once you’ve logged in you will see the following WordPress Dashboard screen:

You can familarize yourself with WordPress’s flexibility by browsing through the menu bar at the top of the Dashboard. You will find plenty of things that allow you to customize your blog to your liking that you can play with and implement over time. For now, there are some things that you need to do before making the first post to your blog and we will cover those here. The rest you can play with over time.

Start by Presentation in the top toolbar and click on Themes in the submenu. Depending upon the hosting service you are using you will now find a number of theme/template options that have been preloaded with your installation (if you chose WebbleYou you will find more than 150 different themes available). Choose a theme you want to use and activate it. With WebbleYou you are provided with a small image of the actual them. Just click the theme you choose and it will be activated. With other services you may have to click an “activate” button to select a theme and then click “view site” at the very top of the Dashboard to see what the theme looks like.

Once you have selected a theme return to the Dashboard and click “Write” and then “Write Post” in the submenu.

This is the main page that you will use to write the content for your blog. While you may be tempted to write something now - Don’t!! There are some important things to be done before your start entering content.

For now we are concerned with the blue drop-down menus on the right. Under “Discussion” make sure that the “allow pings” box is checked. You can also toggle on/off “allow comment”s here. If you want to allow readers to comment on your content check it. If no, make sure it is unchecked. If you are using your blog to promote specific items in your store or particular auctions the only real reason to allow comments is if you want potential customers to be able to ask questions about an item directly in your blog.

Next open the “categories” drop-down menu. If you want you blog content to be grouped in categories this is where you will create those categories. For Paper Pleasures 46 I’ll be creating books, ephemera, and magazine categories to get started. One note, your categories won’t appear on the sidebar of your blog until the first post has been made under that category. Click on “write page” on the submenu and do the same thing for the drop-down menus that appear there.

Now click “links” on the Dashboard menu and select “manage links” from the submenu. Most blog templates come with at least some links included in the template. You will want to delete most, if not all, of them and add your own which you can do under “add links” on the submenu. If you want links to your eBay store, auctions, feedback, etc. in your sidebar this is where you will add them.

Next click “users” on the Dashboard menu. Under “your profile” in the submenu most of the information is probably already filled in but make any changes you feel important here.

Now click “options” on the Dashboard menu. Most of the information under “general” in the submenu is probably already filled out but there are three things we will concern ourselves with right now. Make sure the “Weblog Title” contains the actual name of your blog. This is the name that will appear that the top of your blog when people view it. You also need to change what’s in the “Tagline” box to something of your choosing that reflects the nature of your eBay business. Finally, scroll down the page and make sure the setting in the “Times in the weblog should differ by” box is correct for your time zone. You can make any other changes you want to this page now or later once things are set up.

The “writing”, “reading”, and “discussion” links in the submenu are pretty much self-explanatory and, for the most part, affect how your content appears to your readers. You can play with them until you find an arrangement you like. The “miscellaneous” link settings should be left as it is unless you’re experienced with WordPress.

Lastly for today, click on “permalinks” in the submenu. The following page will appear:

Out of the box, the URLs WordPress assigns to your individual entries are not the most search engine friendly. On this page you can make your individual page URLs more attractive and more search engine friendly. By default WordPress creates URLs that look similar to this:

That doesn’t give much information to a search engine. To make your pages more search engine friendly you need to unselect the default setting and select the “custom” box and enter the following in the “custom structure box”: /%post_id%/%postname%/ Then scroll to the bottom of the page and save this new structure. What this does is insert the title of each post into the page link so a post titled “hot selling ebay items” will look like this:

It’s important that you do make this change before adding content to your blog. If you do it after you’ve added several pages all the URLs for those pages will change. This means any links for search engines, links from other blogs or web sites, and links to any pages readers have bookmarked will be dead and no longer work making much of your work for naught.

Tomorrow we will take a look at the “plugins” link on the Dashboard menu and talk about the ones that will make blogging easier and your blog more search engine friendly.

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