In this next video we discuss the basic configuration of WordPress and provide a basic overview of some of the settings in WordPress.

[flv]http://www.appliedi.net/blog/uploads/basic-wordpress-config.flv[/flv]

Step 1. Defining the URL.

The first thing we learned was that when installing a blog on your website for Rapid Domination it’s advised to publish the blog to a subfolder with a name of “keyword-blog”.  For example, on the acme-hosting.net blog, we would want to target the keyword “web hosting” we should use one of the following possible URLs:

http://www.acme-hosting.net/webhosting-blog/
http://www.acme-hosting.net/web-hosting-blog/

By building the URL in this fashion we’re positioning our most important search engine keyword “Web hosting” to the left most position of our address bar letting the search engines know that this folder is about “web hosting” first and foremost.  We also used dashes “-“ to separate words. There are many different recommendations on whether to seperate words or not separate words in this manner. Some recommend a structure like this in fact:

http://www.acme-hosting.net/WebHostingBlog/

We prefer to use dashes because we feel it makes it easier to read for your visitors.  When optimizing your site for search engines it’s important to also remember you’re ultimately developing your site for humans and although the search engines are important, you want to make your easy to navigate and accessible for your visitors so they buy your products or services.

Step 2. General WordPress Settings

When you log into the WordPress Dashboard and access the Settings tab you’ll find a few General Settings you’ll want to adjust:

Blog Title: You’ll want to set this to the title of your blog.

Blog Tagline: Just a short description about your blog. Something like “Web Hosting and Web Application Technologies Discussions and News” would be fitting for the acme hosting blog.

WordPress Address and Blog Address: should already be set for you.

E-mail Address: This is the email address you’ll get notifications from.

Membership: This is important and will help protect against blog spam. We recommend Users be required to register and be logged in to comment.

The other settings relate to localization, date, time, etc and can be set to what’s most comfortable for you (usually the defaults are fine).

Step 3: Writing Settings

These settings are typically set already be default. There are two things we’ll want to adjust though but that can be done now or later. One is the default post category. Once you’ve started adding blogs you’ll want to categorize them. As you publish articles you can save a little time by setting the default post category to the category you find yourself using the most (Web Hosting News, General Items, etc).  The other setting we want to go ahead and change now is to enable XML-RPC. This will allow us later to publish to our blog using remote post editors like Windows Live Writer.

Step 4: Discussion Settings

One of the things you may want to adjust in the Discussion Settings is how Avatars appear next to comments. Each comment can have a custom icon next to it. These used to be seperate plugins for wordpress but are now built into the core system:

Step 5: Privacy Settings

It’s really important you make sure your blog is visible to engines:

Step 6: Miscellaneous Settings

We’re stepping a bit out of order here but the Miscellaneous settings we typically don’t change but as each website is unique you may find you want to change settings here at some point.

Step 7: Permalinks Settings

Configuring Permalinks is really the key concept in this article in the first Series. A permalink is a permanent URL that your users will reference to get to your blog article.

The settings we’re going to recommend you use for permalinks are in the image below:

The Custom Structure we’re using:

/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

Will give us a URL like:

http://www.acme-hosting.net/webhosting-blog/2008/12/02/sample-post/

Once you’ve set your permalinks settings here and saved the changes. There’s one other step we need to take and that’s to configure/enable Isapi-Rewrite 3.0 from HeliconTech.com.  Isapi-Rewrite is included free in all shared hosting plans at Applied Innovations so it’s something you already have included in your hosting account at no additional cost.

In order to configure isapi-rewrite you’ll create a blank text document called htaccess.txt and in that file you’ll put the following lines:

You’ll want to change the highlighted area to reflect your blog’s URL. You’ll then use an FTP client to upload this file to the folder your blog resides in (keyword-blog) and rename the file from htaccess.txt to .htaccess.  Once you’ve done this your permalinks will work. Please note it’s VERY IMPORTANT to upload this file to your site or permalinks will not work correctly and your blog may become inaccessible until you disable permalinks.  For more detailed instructions on this step please watch the video at the beginning of this article.

Upcoming Videos & Tutorials

In our next videos in this tutorial series we’ll discuss the blog theme and how to change it, how to enable plugins and finally how to publish to your blog remotely.

One of the great features wordpress has is that you can enable a feature called permalinks.  According to Wikipedia:

A permalink is a URL that points to a specific blogging entry even after the entry has passed from the front page into the blog archives. Because a permalink remains unchanged indefinitely, it is less susceptible to link rot.

A permalink is useful as it provides an easy to remember URL to a blog article and is also pretty search engine friendly.

How permalinks used to be done on Windows

Previously if you wanted to enable permalinks in your Windows based blog you had only a couple options:

1. using a custom 404 redirect as explained on the Keyboard face blog.
2. using an ISAPI filter, such as Dean Lee’s isapi filter.

These worked well and I’ve used both in blog. But today, thanks to isapi-rewrite 3.0 from helicontech.com we have a new way to do it. Helicontech’s latest version of isapi-rewrite is mod_rewrite compatible. Mod-rewrite is a URL rewriting engine used in apache web servers and since almost all PHP apps are initially written for apache based servers they make use of mod_rewrite rules. Helicontech saw this and rewrote their own isapi-rewrite tool to be mod_rewrite compatible.

This means if you have an application like wordpress that makes use of mod_rewrite you’ll be able to use the same rules and just upload a .htaccess file to your Windows hosted account and you’re done!  It couldn’t be an easier. Fortunately for you, AppliedI.net includes isapi-rewrite 3.0 for free with all shared hosting accounts so you have this functionality immediately.

How to do permalinks in wordpress in IIS6 with your blog in the root folder

Many users put their blog in their web root folder so when you go to http://www.example.com/ the blog comes up immediately. This tutorial portion assumes this is where your blog is. If this isn’t where you’re blog is please read the next section.

Once you’ve installed your wordpress blog on your site you’ll want to log into the admin section and select options and then select permalinks. You’re going to make the following changes:

1. Under Common Options:

Select Custom, specify below. Enter the custom structure as: /archives/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

2. Under Optional:

We’re going to enter a category base and tag base. This is important because you’re going to categorize your articles (to make them easier for the visitors to browse) and tag your articles to help with searches and also allow your related articles to be grouped. For Category base: /category/ For Tag base: /tags/

3. Update Permalink Structure

Once these are set you’re going to click the button, update permalink structure. This is going to update these settings your database. We’re not done though. We still have to upload the .htaccess file. 

4. Create .htaccess file

You’ll create a new text file and name it .htaccess. In this text file you’re going to include the text:

# Helicon ISAPI_Rewrite configuration file
# Version 3.0.0.21

# BEGIN WordPress
# <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
# </IfModule>
# END WordPress

You’re going to want to enter the text just like that and then upload this file to your website’s root folder. That’s it! Permalinks should now work.

How to setup wordpress permalinks for /blog/ on IIS6 (or windows hosting)

The steps in this section of the tutorial are just like the steps above except this assumes your blog is in a subfolder called /blog/ so your blog is accessed as: http://www.example.com/blog/. If your blog is in a subfolder other than blog you’d change the instructions below substituting your folder name for /blog/. The only step that changes is step #4.

Once you’ve installed your wordpress blog on your site you’ll want to log into the admin section and select options and then select permalinks. You’re going to make the following changes:

1. Under Common Options:

Select Custom, specify below. Enter the custom structure as: /archives/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

2. Under Optional:

We’re going to enter a category base and tag base. This is important because you’re going to categorize your articles (to make them easier for the visitors to browse) and tag your articles to help with searches and also allow your related articles to be grouped. For Category base: /category/ For Tag base: /tags/

3. Update Permalink Structure

Once these are set you’re going to click the button, update permalink structure. This is going to update these settings your database. We’re not done though. We still have to upload the .htaccess file. 

4. Create .htaccess file

You’ll create a new text file and name it .htaccess. In this text file you’re going to include the text:

# Helicon ISAPI_Rewrite configuration file
# Version 3.0.0.21

# BEGIN WordPress
# <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]
# </IfModule>
# END WordPress

You’ll notice RewriteBase has now changed to reflect the /blog/ folder instead of /.  That’s because we’re assuming your blog is in a subfolder named /blog/. Once you’ve modified this file, save it and then upload it into the subfolder /blog/ where your blog is stored. It’s import that the .htaccess file go in the actual folder you’re doing the rewrites on and not the parent folder.

That’s it! Permalinks should now work.

Additional Information

Permalinks are very important as you can imagine and the .htaccess rules above actually came initially from Perishable Press’s article The htaccess Rules for all WordPress Permalinks and have been updated for isapi-rewrite 3.0 compatibility.

If your hosted with a host that doesn’t support isapi-rewrite 3.0 for you blog you can learn more about our WordPress Hosting by following that link.