How To Build A Poker Web Site

When you’re on your Dashboard you’ll see something labeled QuickPress. QuickPress is exactly as it sounds, a quick way to write your latest post without having to click on “Posts” – “Add New.” There is 1 major drawback to QuickPress, however, the inability to categorize your post. If you are using a lot of categories to organize your posts I would strongly urge you not to use QuickPress. If you’re writing something that doesn’t fall into a category then QuickPress will be fine.

P.S. You can always rename your “uncategorized” category in “Posts” – Categories” to whatever you want so all posts written in QuickPress will automatically post to your newly renamed category.

You also lose out on the ability to bold, italicize, bullet, etc. QuickPress is great for on the go writing. Let’s say you just watched some new poker show on television and want to write about what a dumb move some guy made and how he sucked out on your favorite player. Unless you have a category titled “poker shows” this would fall under the uncategorized section of your site and would be the perfect example of when to use QuickPress.

In the beginning you’ll probably want to link to certain websites that you have found useful in the past. Later on down the road other webmasters will contact you (or you’ll contact them) asking for a “link exchange.” Websites exchange links with each other to gain more traffic to their websites.

From the Dashboard click on tab labeled “Links.”

Click on “Add New.”

Your first box is for the name of the link. If you were linking to this website the link name would be “How To Build A Poker Web Site”

The next box to fill out is the Web Address. As the picture says “don’t forget the http://.” If you do forget it, the link will not work. The link will go to yoursite.com/www.theirsite.com whereas if you use http:// the link will go to theirsite.com. In the case of this website the Web Address is http://www.howtobuildapokerwebsite.com. Below that is a box for “Description.” Depending on who you are link trading with they may provide you with a description. This is where you would type that in (or copy and paste it in.) The description for this site would be “Learn how to create a poker website with zero web design experience.”

Now at some point your links may become cluttered if you don’t start using categories. In the case of poker the most common categories would be – poker strategies, poker tools, poker merchandise. Simply click on “+Add New Category” to start the process of creating your new category.

You would then type in the name of your new category. If we’re going with the above example this is where you would type in “poker strategy.” Click “Add” and you’ve created your new category. Click the box next to the category to make sure the link goes where you want it to.

The final element of creating a link is the “target.” You want to select “_blank.” Why? Because you worked hard to get that visitor to your site and you don’t want them navigating off your website that’s why. If you select blank your visitor will see their website in a new window with your website still open as well. This means your visitor won’t lose track of your site or won’t have to click the back button to get back to you.

There are other options available on the add new link page but you can ignore them, they don’t really do anything other than help you categorize who is who for your own record keeping.

If someone asks for an image link you can also scroll down to the “Advanced” section and type in their image location in the box labeled “Image Address.”

Once you’re done typing everything in simply click “Add Link.”

There are both plug-ins and widgets to help you manage your linking. We’ll cover the link widget and plug-in shortly.

First off, let me tell you what a page is. A page is something that you won’t be updating very often. Examples of pages would be – About Me, Contact Me, Privacy Policy, a links page, or a news feed from Full Tilt Poker. A page can also be used as a Welcome message for your WordPress blog instead of using your most recent posts. Businesses switching over to WordPress typically go that route.

From the Dashboard click on “Pages.”

Now click on “Add New.”

You will be taken to a screen that looks similar to the Posts page with several exceptions. There will be no area for Excerpts, post tags, or even categories. You do, however, have a new option on the right hand side called “Attributes.”

Once you have created a page you will have the option of placing new pages beneath it. This is known as the Parent-Child relationship. One level deeper and it is known as the Parent-Child-Grandchild relationship. Visually it looks something like this…

That’s right it looks just like post categories do. Page Parents operate in the same fashion as category parents.

Depending on which theme you are using you’ll also have the option of selecting different “templates.” A template is simply how the page looks to the visitor. Some themes have the option, some themes don’t. There are plenty of WordPress plug-in’s out there to let you start configuring what will and won’t show up depending on what part of the site your visitor is on.

Once you’ve written your page simply click “Publish.”

Now that we have the blog up and running it’s time to start writing about something right? OK, well here’s how we create your very first post. We’ll start in the Dashboard section.

On the left hand side of the Dashboard there is a button labeled “Posts.” Click on it.

Now simply click on “Add New.” You will be brought to a screen that reads “Add New Post.”

Directly below “Add New Post” is a box. This is where you will type in the title of your post. On the post you are currently reading the title of my post is “How To Create Your First WordPress Post.”

The big box is where you are going to start typing your post. This is where all your content goes. You have options to bold text, italicize text, do scratch thru’s, bulleted or numbered lists, make a section a “block quote” (more about that later), set the alignment of your page, link to other webpages, etc.

Below the content of your post is a section labeled “Excerpt.” Typically what I do is simply copy and paste the first paragraph. The Excerpt is only visible under certain settings or themes in WordPress. The Excerpt applies to categories and archives. We’ll cover that in a future post.

As of right now all your posts will be going into the “Uncategorized” category. If you want to create a new category on the fly look on the right hand side for the “+ Add New Category” button and click on it.

Now simply type in the name of your new category and click “Add.” As you can see from the picture once you have more than 1 category you will have the option to choose “Parent Category.” A Parent category is used for organizing posts. Let’s say you have a category on your website called “poker.” Poker is fairly broad. Now let’s say you want a new category called “Tournament Strategy” but you want it to be a sub-category of “poker.” “Poker” would be the parent category of tournament strategy in this case. Certain WordPress Themes allow you to use dropdown menu’s for your categories. Here’s a visual example…

In the above example taken from MMA High Performance Training in Oxnard, CA “About” is the parent of everything below it. “Trainers” is also the parent of the bios for the trainers. This would be known as Parent-Child-Grandchild categories.

Once you’ve set up a few categories you now have the option of choosing which category your post falls under. Simply check the box next to the appropriate category.

Post tags are used in a variety of ways. If you have search enabled on your WordPress blog people will be given results based on the tags you have provided for your posts. A “tag cloud” can also be created allowing visitors to search your site based on popular words or phrases. WordPress also makes use of something known as a “plug-in” which will be discussed in the near future where a popular plug-in known as “Yet Another Related Posts Plug-In” will show your visitors posts that are similar based on the tags you’ve chosen.

After you have everything set and ready to go simply click “Publish.” Your post is now on your website.

You want people to find your website right? Well it’s not going to happen very quick if all your posts are left the way WordPress comes installed (yoursite.com/?p=2). The main factors of on page search engine optimization are as follows – site title which you learned how to change in a previous lesson, page title (the title of your posts), using header tags (which is taken care of you when you title your posts), and the url of your web page.  Let’s change those url’s from something ugly to something the search engines will love shall we…

For starters log into your WordPress dashboard.

Go down to “Settings” and click on “Permalinks.”

Now go down to where it says “Custom Structure.” There are two ways to pull this off. One would be simply typing in the WordPress code to change all urls to the name or you can simply click on “day and name” then backspace a portion of it.

As you can see the code looks like this “/%postname%/”. Once you have that in your custom structure box with the button checked simply scroll down to “Save Changes” and click the button. If you’d like you can also insert the category code into your custom structure like this “/%category%/” so the final display would read “/%category%/%postname%/” although this can get messy when trying to name pages….. Example – You have a category called poker and your title is “Poker Hands.” The url would look something like this – yoursite.com/poker/poker-hands/. I leave the choice up to you on whether or not you want to use the category permalink section. I never do, some experts say you should.

Upgrading your WordPress Blog is the first step in making sure your site is safe and secure from hackers. Believe it or not people do get kicks out of messing with other people’s stuff. Each time a new WordPress update comes along I would advise updating as their updates are established to protect you from the bad guys.

As you can see from the image there are 2 places to click to update. Either one works. Simply click on the update button then tell WordPress to update automatically. You will then have the most recent stable version of WordPress.

Want video? I have you covered.

Alright, now let’s say that you installed your WordPress blog to yoursite.com/funny/ but you want your blog to show up on yoursite.com. Once again this is a fairly simple process. This time, however, you’re actually going to have to make some changes outside of WordPress to do this. Log into your hosting account (Hostgator, IX Web Hosting, Powweb, Ipower, Godaddy, etc) and look for something labeled “File Manager.”

Click on “File Manager” which will now bring you into a list of files. We’ll assume you only have 1 domain name for this walkthrough. Depending on your hosting company the first file name you’ll have to click on will be one of the following – The name of your website (yoursite.com), public_html if you’re using Ipower or Hostgator or htdocs if you’re using Powweb. Once you’ve clicked on that you’ll see some files and folders. Click on the folder that is named for your directory. In the case of the walkthrough we’re looking for the file folder “funny.” (yoursite.com/funny/)

Now locate the index.php file. Download this file to your computer. You should be able to download it simply by clicking on it then clicking “Download” or checking the box then clicking the “Download” button. Once the file has been saved to your computer open it up with Notepad.

Look for the section of code that is highlighted above. This is the only thing you will be changing. Where it says (‘./wp-blog-header.php’) you want to change that to the location of your WordPress blog. In this example you would change it to read (‘./funny/wp-blog-header.php’) Now save your file in notepad. You are now going to upload this file to your root directory. Your root directory is the first thing you see after clicking on public_html, htdocs, or yoursite.com. Once that file is uploaded you want to go back into your WordPress Dashboard.

Scroll down to “Settings” then click on “General.”

You will see a section labeled “Blog address (URL).” You want to delete /funny/ from this section so it looks similar to the above picture. Now scroll down to the bottom and click save. Your blog can now be found at yoursite.com.

At some point you’re going to want your site to say something other than “My Blog – Just Another Wordpress Blog.” Changing this is as easy as 1.2.3. All right let’s get down to it.

When you are logged into your dashboard (also known as your admin panel) you will see a series of links on the left hand side of the page. You want to go down to the section labeled “Settings” and click on it.

You will now see a series of links. Click on the one labeled “General.”

You can now change both the title and Tag Line of your blog. Choose something unique for your title. In the case of this website the title is “How To Build A Poker Web Site” and the Tagline is “Free Web Design, Poker SEO, and much more.”

Now simply scroll to the bottom and click “Save Changes” and you’re all done.

Yet another system used by hosting providers is called Install Central. Hosting providers such as Powweb and Ipower use Install Central. Basically all of these are just different names for the exact same system. In your control panel look for the button labeled “Install Central” and click on it.

Once you’ve clicked on Install Central you’ll be brought to another screen.

Look for the tab labeled “Blogs” and click on it.

You will now be given a description of what a blog is. Click on “WordPress.”

Now simply click on “Begin Installation” then follow the directions on the screen. You will be able to choose a username, password, and location for your blog.

EasyApps is another tool hosting companies may use for installing content management systems. The control panel is known as Hsphere. Content management system simply means some sort of program that is easy to use that builds a website for you. WordPress is not the only content management system out there, but it is by far the easiest to use and the most flexible.

Scroll down to the bottom and look for EasyApps Collection. Click on it to be brought to the next screen.

Once you’ve clicked on EasyApps you’ll see a large selection of different programs you can install. Click on WordPress.

Now click on “Install.” Follow the on screen instructions to set your username, wordpress blog location, and password. Don’t stress too much about the location, we’re going to go over how to change that in an upcoming post.