Need a little more help?

(Affiliate link: If you buy from here, I get a small commission.)

Previous entries:

• #1: Why WordPress?
• #2: Domain Names, Hosting Plans, and installing WP
• #3: 10 Free Basic PlugIns You Should Add

Now that you have your recommended plugins installed, let’s go through the basic settings for your blog. Some will be self-explanatory, while others a little more obscure.

All of the settings are located in the lefthand column of your blog dashboard. Look at the bottom link, cleverly called Settings, and click the arrow next to it to open the submenu.

Click on General.

General Settings

Your blog title, tagline, and email address should have been set up when Fantastico installed WordPress for you. If it isn’t right, you can correct it now. The WordPress address and blog address were also automatically set up. Do not change these — this tells WP where to find your blog, and if you change them, you and your visitors will see only a database error where your blog should be.

Next comes Membership. The “Anyone can register” box is unchecked by default. Since your Subscribe2 plugin requires that people be able to register, you should check this box.

“New User Default Role” is Subscriber. Leave this as is.

Timezone: Choose a city in your time zone. It’s a long list divided up by continent, so you may have to do a little looking. Or, if you don’t see one and you know your local offset from Universal (Greenwich Mean) Time, you can enter that instead. It’s better to choose a city if possible; WordPress will automatically account for Daylight Savings Time when a city is listed, but it will not if you use a UT offset.

Date format, Time format, Weeks starts on: Self-explanatory. The default values are usually fine.

Scroll to the bottom and click on Save Changes.

Now click on Writing.

Writing Settings

On this screen, I generally change only two things: Check both boxes next to Formatting, and be sure that both boxes are checked next to Remote Publishing (Atom and XML-RPC protocols). If you plan to post by email, you can fill out that section next; I generally don’t bother with it.

Click Save Changes and then go to Discussion. You can take a look at Reading but should not need to change the default values.

Discussion Settings

These options give you a great deal of control over how comments are posted and by whom, so if you start hearing about those indispensable pharmaceuticals again, you can filter them out without having to moderate every single comment.

Here are the initial settings I recommend:

If you start having trouble with spam, you can require that a commenter be registered and logged in before leaving a comment. Or you can require that they have a previously-approved comment. In the latter case, you will have to manually approve the first time a new person leaves a comment, but after the first time their comments will be automatically approved. I suggest that you leave it open at first; people often are irritated when they write out a lengthy response to a post and submit it, only to be greeted with a message that their comment is being held for moderation.

Below the section pictured above are two more sections: one having to do with blacklisted words and one with avatars. You can leave both in the default state now.

Save Changes.

Media Settings

Like Reading, look at these options but you shouldn’t need to make changes at this time.

Privacy Settings

This one is important because one option or the other will be checked, but various webhosts check different ones. The one you want is the first choice: “I would like my blog to be visible to everyone.”

Note that if you don’t want everyone to see it until you have completely awesomized your blog and written a post or two, then feel free to check the second button. Just remember to flip the switch when you want the world to find you.

Permalink Settings

Very important!

By default, WordPress links to your blog posts like this:

http://yourdomainname.com/blog/?p=123

which tells your reader absolutely nothing about what the post is about. I recommend either Month and Name, which gives you a post URL that looks like

http://pisces-moon.com/blog/2010/01/cultivating-your-eye-and-your-voice/

… note the year and month in the URL …

or Custom Structure using /%postname%/, which would give you

http://pisces-moon.com/blog/cultivating-your-eye-and-your-voice/.

Either will tell your reader what to expect and it will help you with the magic Google rankings.

Save Changes.

IMPORTANT NOTE: On some installations of WordPress, if you choose a permalink structure other than default, you may see a message at the bottom of the page that looks like this:

In that case, you will need to create a file called .htaccess in your blog directory and CHMOD it to 777 in order to change the permalink structure. Teaching you how to do that is beyond the scope of this lesson. At some point I will write the instructions, but until then you’re welcome to call or email me for more help.

Miscellaneous Settings

Take a look but you won’t need to change any of the default values.

CommentLuv

The only choice you need to make here is which badge you want to display on your page:

Save Changes.

Subscribe To Comments

No changes needed.

TinyMCE Advanced

Ah. Now we have a plethora of possibilities!

TinyMCE Advanced is the enhanced visual editor for WordPress. This is the panel you see when you first open this page:

The top bar is the default that comes installed with TinyMCE. Mouse over each of the symbols to find out what the button does. You can remove buttons from the top bars if you don’t think you will ever use them, and you can add buttons from the bottom. Move them around and make it useful to your style of writing. Save your changes.

Now there is one last change to make on this page, and it may be the most important of all.

Check the box next to “Stop removing the < p > and < br / > tags when saving and show them in the HTML editor.” If you write your text in a word processor or other program and then cut-and-paste it to WordPress, this control makes sure that your paragraphs remain intact instead of running everything together into a big blob of words.

Tweet This

Lots more options here!

You can choose the service you want to use for URL shortening. The default option is Th8.us; I prefer bit.ly, but it really doesn’t matter. They all work in the same way.

You can choose a badge to use for your Tweet This links, plus (click on Extended Services) badges for a number of other services including Facebook, StumbleUpon, and Digg.

Save your changes.

Subscribe2

Look but no need to touch.

WordBook

You will need to follow the directions in order to set up your blog to post to Facebook. You click on the link on the settings page to log in to your Facebook account and obtain a code phrase. Return to your blog, enter the code, and click Submit. At that point, posts to your blog will automatically be cross-posted to your Facebook account.

At least until they change their application code again.

WP-DB-Backup

To find this one, you need to look for Backup under the Tools menu in the lefthand column.

As with the .htaccess file, with some installations of WordPress you may see the following scary message:

This time, though, you don’t need to panic. Scroll down a little farther:

Choose “email backup to” and enter your email address, then choose the frequency you want to receive the database. Click Schedule Backup, and you are done.

Next week: Choosing and installing a theme to awesomize your new blog.

Fiber Art Happenings

1. Exhibition in Tulsa, Oklahoma, opening February 5, 2010: Modern Materials: The Art of the Quilt

An invitational art exhibition including 30 fiber art pieces by 24 artists, curated by Jill Rumoshosky Werner and featuring a special emphasis on 3-D works, opens February 5 at Living Arts,307 E. Brady, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Opening reception is February 5 from 5-9 pm; the show runs through February 25.

2. Gee’s Bend quilts in Flint, Michigan, opening January 23, 2010: “Mary Lee Bendolph: Gee’s Bend Quilts and Beyond.:

The exhibit, featuring the work of Mary Lee Bendolph and three of her relatives from Gee’s Bend, AL, was organized by Tinwood, an Atlanta, GA organization committed to “increasing public awareness and appreciation of the vernacular visual arts of the African American South.” In addition to the quilts are works by two contemporary Alabama-based artists, Thorton Dial and Lonnie Holley, who use found objects to create assemblage sculptures.

The show runs through April 18 at the Flint Institute of Arts, 1120 E. Kearsley St, Flint, Mi.

Other Cool Things

3. What would the earth look like if it had rings like Saturn? (YouTube video)

Wow. Talk about a different point of view! I’ve seen simulations that show the Earth with two moons or even two suns, but this is the first time I’ve ever thought of how the sky would look if it had rings. Now I almost wish it did.

I don’t normally like or recommend video, but this one is mind-stretching. Go take a look.

4. Shiba Inu puppycam returns!

Whoa. Two videos in one week!

Remember the Shiba Inu puppies from a couple of years ago? A couple in San Francisco set up a webcam through Ustream TV so they could monitor the progress of the puppies during the day. It wasn’t intended as a public performance, but the video link went viral because the little balls of fluff were just so adorable.

There’s a new litter of adorable fluffballs, and the video link is live again. If you go visit and the webcam is not currently on, there are several stored videos of the babies you can watch until they wake up.

All together now… awwwwwwwww.

5. Read ebooks from Amazon without a Kindle

There have been times I’ve been tempted by the idea of immediately downloading a book from Amazon, especially when it’s something I need right away and the price (usually $9.99) is considerably less than the cost of a paper book. Every time I’m tempted, though, I consider the $300 price tag for the Kindle and lose all enthusiasm.

But now Amazon has released a free Kindle app for the PC (Windows 7, Vista, XP — Mac version coming soon) that allows you to download and read books without owning a Kindle. Now you’re talkin’!

What else has come across your screen this week?

Need a little more help?

(Affiliate link: If you buy from here, I get a small commission.)

Previous entries:

• #1: Why WordPress?
• #2: Domain Names, Hosting Plans, and installing WP

One of the most versatile features of WordPress is the thousands of plugins available to make tasks easier or to add functions to the main program. Using plugins, you can set up WordPress as your entire website, as a PayPal shopping cart, as a membership site, as well as other exciting possibilities.

This week, let’s talk about the most useful plugins that I think every installation of WordPress should have. The first four are must-haves, in my opinion. #5 is optional, and the rest are ways to help increase reader interaction on your blog. Because who wants to write just to themselves without a conversation?

After the list, we’ll talk about how to install them.

1. Akismet

This indispensible anti-spam plugin comes with WordPress. It requires activation with an API key, which is free and only takes a minute or two; the plugin settings have clear instructions and links to follow for obtaining the key. Once you activate it, spam comments are generally not much of a problem. If some of them still get through, there are ways to tweak the settings on your blog so that your readers aren’t faced with links to beautiful Russian brides or online poker or those interesting pharmaceuticals that seem to be necessary to having a well-rounded life.

2. TinyMCE Advanced

WordPress comes with a visual editor that allows you to easily bold, underline, add links, and perform certain other operations while you are writing or editing your posts. Unfortunately, it has quirks. The most annoying of these is that if you write your blog post in another program and copy and paste it into WordPress, the visual editor removes all your paragraph breaks and formatting and runs all the text together in one big amorphous blob.

TinyMCE Advanced fixes that problem and adds a number of new features to the visual editor. If you normally write in Microsoft Word and copy/paste to WordPress, TinyMCE Advanced will automatically remove the useless MSWord code bits that don’t belong in your blog post. It also provides easier ways to change fonts, check your spelling, search and replace text, add and edit tables, and much more.

You can drag and drop any of these buttons onto your editor toolbar, so that if you don’t need spell check and never use tables, you won’t have those cluttering up your edit bar, yet you will have instant access to the tools you do use.

3. WP-DB-Backup

Every reputable hosting company provides automatic backups of your site and your databases. Generally, though, these backups run only once a week, often on Saturday or Sunday night when traffic to the server is low. So what happens if your site crashes on a Friday afternoon? Your hosting company can restore the database to their last saved state, but you would lose all your posts and comments since that copy was stored.

WP-DB-Backup puts backup control in your hands by emailing or saving a copy of your WordPress database on the schedule you set — once a week or once a day. On my servers, I have set automatic daily backups so that I will never lose more than a day’s worth of information. For your installation, I would recommend at the very least that you set WP-DB-Backup to back up and email you a file on Wednesday every week. You can discard the old file when you save the most recent one, so that it doesn’t fill up your hard drive with outdated information.

4. Contact Form 7

It’s usually not a good idea to post your email address on your blog “in the clear,” meaning to write it out in the form of YourName@YourDomain.com. Spam robots love this and they will scoop up your address and send you even more helpful links to those Russian brides and necessary pharmaceuticals. But you want people to be able to get in touch with you, so how do you do that?

This plugin makes it easy to set up — no juggling of Perl or configuring scripts or trying to figure out why it won’t work. Take a look at my contact form to see how the form looks. Send me an email to see how it works.

Note also the way I showed you my real email address — spam robots won’t pick that up, yet it’s easy for you to put it into your mail program and email me directly if you’d rather.

5. All in One SEO Pack

I don’t really have the space here to get into what SEO (search engine optimization) is or how it works. The easiest way to think of it is “Google magic.” If your blog uses good SEO practices, it’s easier for Google and the other search engines to find you and list your posts when people search for subjects you’ve written about. This plugin gives you control over the page title, meta keywords, and meta description that shows up in search engine listings.

If none of those terms make sense to you and you aren’t really concerned about being on the first page of Google with your blog, then you can skip this plugin.

Plugins that help increase conversation with your readers

We need an audience to read what we write and to talk to us. What’s the fun in it otherwise? So here are some plugins to help encourage readership and participation.

6. Add to Any OR Tweet This + WordBook

Add to Any makes it easy for readers to share, save, bookmark, and email your posts and pages using any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, and over 100 more social bookmarking and sharing sites. It does a little voodoo magic reading of your visitor’s browser and places the services they use most at the top of the menu that they see. (This strikes me as just a tad creepy, but I may be overly sensitive.)

If that’s overkill, or if you too find it a bit unsettling, then choose Tweet This, which puts buttons under each post for social media services you select (Plurk, Yahoo Buzz, Delicious, Digg, Facebook, MySpace, Ping.fm, Reddit, and StumbleUpon, or any combination of these), giving your visitor a quick way to send a tweet or bookmark your post to share with others. You can also set up Tweet This to automatically tweet the post to your Twitter account. (I use Tweet This on this blog.)

WordBook does only one thing: When you publish a post to your blog, it automatically cross-posts it to your Facebook page. I’ve found it a little persnickety, possibly because Facebook has been tinkering with its software a lot recently. But when it works, it’s great.

7. CommentLuv

I really like this one. When someone comments on a post on your blog, CommentLuv will look at their website URL. If it goes to a blog, the plugin will fetch a link to their latest post and display it under their name when they finish and submit their comment.

This does several good things. It gives your commenter an automatic link back to his or her blog, which in turn brings it to the attention of people who might not know about it. If your commenter is good with post titles, there will be an intriguing link to encourage other readers to click back to see what that blog is all about. So it offers a reason for people to comment on your blog, and it encourages interaction among your readers. I’ve found a number of great blogs to follow by clicking on CommentLuv links.

9. Subscribe2

This plugin allows people to sign up to be notified by email when you publish a new blog post. It encourages return visits, because readers don’t have to remember to check in at your site every so often and don’t have to fiddle with RSS feeds.

10. Subscribe To Comments

This one serves a similar purpose, but it allows readers to subscribe to the comment stream on one particular post that is of interest.

Installing Your Plugins

WordPress now has plugin installation built in, so the process really couldn’t be much simpler.

Go to your Dashboard and find “Plugins” in the lefthand menu. Click on the down arrow next to it to open the submenu. Click on “Add New.”

Now you will see a new page with a search box.

Type in the name of your plugin and click on “Search Plugins.” Next you will see a screen with all the plugins that matched your search terms. Here I’ve entered “CommentLuv.”

Click on “Install” at the right, and you’re done. Easy!

What if it doesn’t work?

There are occasions when the easy installation process doesn’t work, generally because of server settings or time-out on a crowded network. In that case, plugins can be installed manually. Since that process is a bit involved and this post is already approaching Dead Sea scroll length, I’ll write that as a separate tutorial and make it available at a later date.

Next week: Setting up your initial options.

Yet because of his practiced eye and cultivated voice, he makes this experience completely come alive with gorgeous sentences: “A two-litre bottle of Fresca came by with a four-year-old girl attached.” Isn’t that so much more evocative than an ordinary description of a little girl drinking a big soda?

Read. Observe your surroundings today. Then plan how you can translate that experience into your art — in words or in images — and go make something beautiful from something utterly ordinary.

Click on the image to download a PDF version. Print it out and post it on your wall.

Then head into 2010 knowing that you are a month ahead of the rest of the world… and that you don’t have to be perfect!

Happy New Year!

This week:

- Visual Thesaurus
- Rice Freeman-Zachery on Getting Rid of Stuff — and why we are afraid to do it.
- Picassos With Pixels: 12 Groundbreaking Pieces of Digital Art
- Pantone’s Color of the Year for 2010
- Facebook Privacy Update: Don’t Use the Default Settings

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1. Visual Thesaurus: A completely brilliant boon to both writers and visual artists. You enter a word and instead of getting back a list of related words, you get a sort of tree with related words branching off from the one you entered. Click on one of the associated words and it moves to the center with new branches growing from it.

The service is free for a limited number of lookups. Unlimited usage is $2.95 a month or $19.95 a year.
_______

2. And Now Let’s Talk about Organizing Your Space, Part I: Getting Rid of Stuff

You know it’s true: you hang onto stuff you don’t want and don’t use and might not even like very much just in case that day comes when you need it and can’t afford to buy it and are so needy that you’ll be ever-so-grateful for having that Thing in the back of the closet. …You keep the extra set of dishes your ex-mother-in-law gave you, never mind that you hate them and that they remind you of the bastard who spent your joint 401K on some bimbo from Idaho—you keep those dishes so that, when you become homeless and unemployed and too sick to work, you’ll at least have something nice from which to eat your beans and Government Cheese.

There are times in my life when I’d love to be outrageous and flamboyant and not give a flying rat’s patootie what anybody thought of my clothes or my hair. I would love to have ATTITUDE, baby! Rice (rhymes with Lisa) Freeman-Zachery has it all the way from her tattooed ankles to her spiked orange hair, and she’s a terrific writer as well as a fiber artist.

I want to be Rice when I grow up. How can you not love someone who writes sentences that sizzle like this:

In short, what you’re doing by hanging onto all this crap is feeding your fear that someday your life will suck so badly that you’ll be happy to have that beige polyester leisure suit or that mustard-yellow wool jacket that’s too tight across the shoulders or that pilled-up pink blanket that makes you itch.

Or you fear the day you won’t be able to afford good acrylics, and so you have all these dried-out tubes of paint stored in drawers in your studio as a hedge against that day, because you figure you can cut open the tubes and mix the dried-up paint with water and at least have a little bit to paint with, living there in your cardboard box on the sidewalk, making your brushes out of your own hair tied to a twig with used dental floss you salvaged out of the dumpster.

Go. Read. Bookmark. Then start getting rid of fear.

And stuff.

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3. Picassos With Pixels: 12 Groundbreaking Pieces of Digital Art

Photographs from an exhibition of digital art at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, these images are static slices of art that moves — videos, interactive art that reacts when you move in front of it, a playful installation that allows the viewer to “blow” the fluff from a dandelion by pointing a “hairdryer” at the video screen.

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4. Pantone’s Color of the Year for 2010. I won’t tell you what it is, but the remarks on Twitter today have been scathing. My favorite? “Oh rly? Color of the year “inspired” by tacky tourist Southwest jewelry?”

It will be interesting to see how this color is used in design and fabric this coming year.

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5. Facebook Privacy Update: Don’t Use the Default Settings

[T]here’s an odd little twist to Facebook’s changes today that is almost, but not quite, in your best interests. The default settings that Facebook recommends goes something like: “transmit all your status updates and uploads to everyone on the Net, not just your friends.” Since Facebook estimates that only 15% to 20% of users take the time to adjust the privacy settings to suit their needs, this is most definitely going to lead to people sharing too much information, or accidentally leaking out stuff they thought was semi-private (which is great for reporters, but maybe not so good for everyone else). Given that “inappropriate” content your Facebook profile can get you fired by an overly-prudish boss nowadays, this is bound to cause an uproar.

I swear I’m going to delete my account altogether.

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And a bonus: 20 Ways to Tell If You Use Social Media Too Much

(Hm… how many of these apply to you? I’m not telling…)

1. You are going to spend the Christmas holiday with @grandma and @grandpa.
2. You log in to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn (or another form of social media) before you eat breakfast or get dressed each morning.
3. When a friend says something clever, you respond by saying “I’ll retweet that.”

Happy weekend!

Need a little more help?

(Affiliate link: If you buy from here, I get a small commission.)

Other entries:

• 31: Why WordPress?
• #3: 10 Free Basic PlugIns You Should Add

After reading last week’s WW, you’ve decided that having your own WordPress on your own domain is exactly what your marketing efforts need. So how do you get started setting it up?

I’m going to walk you, step-by-step, through the process of doing it yourself. It’s not difficult to do, but it is a little complicated. Note: If you are not a techno-nerd and just want it Done! Now! then the easy way is listed at the end of this post.

If you’d rather do it yourself, read on and I will teach you how.

First Things First

First of all, you will need a domain name. If you don’t already have one, think about the most appropriate name for your blog and website. For a business owner, that would of course be your business name or something closely related. For an artist’s website, your own name would be appropriate.

Domain names are like real estate. Five years ago they were cheap and plentiful, and it was easy to buy the one you wanted without worrying if someone else got there ahead of you. They’re still cheap, but the speculators have moved in and bought up a lot of good ones already, so you might have to be a bit creative when finding one that’s available.

You can check the availability of the domain name you’d like to buy at Domain Tools.

Enter the domain name you want — we’ll use JaneSmith.com as an example — press Search, and you’ll see a screen that looks like this:

The filled-in globes to the right of the name show that the .com, .net and other forms of the name are already taken. Bummer. But below that is a list of suggested similar names that are available. Scan through the list and brainstorm some alternatives. JaneSmithArtworks.com? JaneSmithQuilts.com? Type them into the box at the top of the page and see what’s available.

Buy Your Domain Name

Once you’ve made a choice of domain name, you need to buy it. Domain Tools can help you search for an available name, but they won’t register the name for you. Where should you go to do this?

Technical note: You don’t actually “buy” the name. You lease the right to use it from ICANN, who is in charge of assigning all domain names everywhere. This is why there is a yearly fee associated with your domain name.

First, a “don’t.” Many webhosting companies will include a “Free!” domain name when you host with them. Unless you know and trust the company, however, it’s always best to buy your own domain name. Some of them register the domain in their own names so that you don’t actually own it. If you decide to leave their webhosting because of problems, you will lose your domain name and all the exposure that you’ve worked so hard to build.

Now… where should you buy your domain name?

The least expensive registrar that I know of, at about $10 per year, is GoDaddy.com. They are good people and I personally have more than 100 names registered there. However, their website is extremely busy and confusing and (snob warning) it’s a little trashy with lots of pics of scantily-clad GoDaddy Girls all over it. You’ll also be subjected to really hard upsell for more services as you check out.

For clean and simple and no hard sell, I’d suggest dotEarth.com or enomcentral.com. Cost for a domain name here is $25 – $30 per year.

On to Web Hosting

Now you need some sort of hosting plan, which is like renting a space if you are planning to open a store. You’ll be fine with the smallest shared hosting plan, which is generally quite inexpensive. Plans can be found for around $5 a month and may be less expensive if you pay in advance for a year. Most webhosts have a 30-day money-back guarantee, so if you pay and then find out you can’t work with them, you can cancel and get a full refund.

I would suggest looking for a Linux plan with cPanel and Fantastico (more on that later). Several companies offer Windows hosting and some people think that because they have a Windows computer they need this, but that’s not the case. Windows or Linux is the system that the remote computer, the webhost, uses to run itself and has nothing to do with what’s on your computer.

Recommended webhosts:

–> (this is me) 2FishWeb.com

Hostgator.com

KnownHost.com

ASmallOrange.com

All offer Linux/cPanel plans, guaranteed uptime, and great customer service. You won’t go wrong with any of them. Note: These are not affiliate links, except my own site. If you choose one of the others, I get no commission. These are recommendations based on personal experience of hosts I would use myself.

Set up your web plan

As you purchase your hosting plan, you will see the option to use an existing domain name or to register a new one. Since you have a domain name already, choose that option and enter your newly-acquired domain name.

Once your purchase is complete, you’ll receive a welcome email from your webhost with your username, password, and other information including the nameserver data. THIS IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. Save this email — you’ll need it from time to time during the life of your website.

Change your DNS pointers

Now go back to the place where you bought your domain name. Sign in to your account and look for a link marked “Set DNS” or “Change Nameservers.” Click on that. There will be at least two boxes with cryptic names in there like “NS267.GRANDPRIX.HOSTGATOR.COM” and “NS268.GRANDPRIX.HOSTGATOR.COM.” (The NS numbers will always be sequential.)

Open your email from your hosting company and look for the nameservers they gave you. Erase the ones that are in the boxes and enter the new ones. Click OK.

Now sit back and wait for a couple of hours (possibly up to 24 hours, but usually much less). This process is like filing a change of address with the post office — it takes a little while for everybody to get the news that you’ve moved.

After that couple of hours or so, open your browser and type in your domain name. If you see a web page, even if it is blank or has a list of files on it, then your change of address has occurred and you can install WordPress.

Install WordPress

This is the easy part. I promise!

Remember when I suggested that you look for a hosting plan with Linux, cPanel, and Fantastico? Here’s why.

Sign in to your cPanel.

In your browser, type in http://YourDomainName.com/cpanel . A box asking for your username and password will pop up. Find those on the email from your webhost that I told you to save, enter them, and Submit.

You’ll see a scary screen with lots of options. Don’t worry about them right now. Just scroll down and find the Fantastico Deluxe icon — it’s usually near the bottom. Look for the blue smiley face.

On the next screen, click on Wordpress in the lefthand column.

You’ll see some information about WordPress on the next screen. Click on New Installation.

Page 1 of 3: You’ll see some information already filled in on this next screen. Important things here:

– Install in directory: blog
– Admin access data: Choose your username here. It’s case sensitive, so if you enter it as “Laura” you can’t sign in as “laura.” Do NOT use “admin” as your username. This is a security risk.
– Password: This is the password you will use to sign into your blog dashboard.
– Admin nickname: Choose how you want your name to be displayed. This does not have to be the same as the username.
– Email address and site name: self-explanatory.
– Description: You can leave it blank for now.

Click install.

Page 2 of 3: Check to make sure that everything is correct, and click Finish Installation.

Page 3 of 3: You’re done. There is an option on this page to email the installation details to yourself. This is a good idea, so do that and save that email as well.

WordPress is installed!

Next week: Recommended plugins

ps… I promised I’d tell you the Easy Way to do all this:

Or check back next week for the next steps. I promise you won’t hurt my feelings.

So how to start Month Zero?

Well, first of all… do you have goals set for next year? They don’t have to be big goals like “restore world peace” or “stamp out hunger.” They do need to be measurable, though. You can’t say something vague like “I’ll make more quilts next year.”

Nope. Make it concrete. “I made XX quilts this year. Next year I will make YY.”

Or “I will enter one exhibition/quilt show this year.”

Or “I will take a class from (teacher I’ve always secretly admired).”

That’s the first step. Write down those specific goals — one, or several, or a whole bunch. If there are a whole bunch, try to prioritize them. “I really want to do this thing, but I am absolutely going to do that one if I have to hijack a Wells Fargo truck to pay for it.”

(Just kidding about the Wells Fargo truck. Law enforcement officials would frown upon it and they wouldn’t allow needles or other sharp objects in your cell. Difficult to make quilts that way.)

(Besides, I think Wells Fargo changed its name last year. It would have to be a Loomis truck.)

Write your goals. Make them measurable. Share them here if you like, and we’ll form a Monday Morning Kick in the Pants Society to help keep each other on track with the goals. Or pin them up on your wall and keep track of them yourself. But I promise you, having a group to gently and lovingly kick you in the pants — and cheer like crazy when you reach a goal — is a Good Thing in terms of getting things done.

It’s just like Weight Watchers, only without the weigh-in. Or you know, that whole keeping-track-of-food thing.

Next time: You’ve got your goals, but how do you get there from here?

(Raises hand. GUILTY.)

Part of it is, of course, that “life is what happens while you are making other plans.” Your energy gets poleaxed by a lengthy illness, you trip over a footstool in the middle of the night and break something important like your dominant hand. A family member needs extensive care. Not much we can do about these things.

But for me, at least, a lot of the “never getting important things done” has to do with the monsters. Those shadowy Critics who live in the dark and say things like “You can’t do this, so why try?” “Nobody will like it anyway.” “You don’t really have any talent, you know.” “Quit trying to make waves and just be happy with what your employers think you’re worth.”

I’ve spent a long, long time listening to the monsters. Years. There were times times I’ve been able to stuff my fingers in my ears and sing “Lalala can’t HEAR you!!!”, but there were a lot of monsters and only one of me and I can’t work very well with my fingers stuffed in my ears.

And sometimes the monsters sneak up on you. My web design business, which I didn’t start so much as fell into thanks to Art2Mail (thank you, Art2Mail!), has been rolling along merrily, growing a little every year. Things were good. Things were manageable. Things were happy and comfortable.

Then in June of this year, I fell off a cliff. (Metaphorically, I add hastily.)

Early in 2009 I “fired” a couple of clients. There were payment problems and a general mismatch of attitudes and goals, and in one case there was the possibility of outright fraud that I had no intention of being associated with in any way. I felt good about turning them loose, but it did cost me some income.

In May I started having problems with a third client. By the beginning of June she let me know coldly that my services were no longer required. Even worse, people quit calling for updates and new services.

OMG. It’s dead. No one will ever call you again and you’ll die broke and have to close the business and lose the house and the disgrace will be written all over your face and you’ll never be able to hold your head up in polite company again. Fail fail FAIL.

Hello, monsters.

This time, though, I didn’t curl up on the floor of the closet and let them walk over me. I decided to talk to them instead.

Me: Hello, monsters. Please note that I am holding up a calendar marked “June.” It’s summer. People go outside in the summer and do things, like swim and picnic and go for long walks and grow flowers and tomatoes. This is temporary. People don’t stay inside and do computery things in the summer.

Monster #1: You do.

Me: Well, that’s true. I do. But I do it because I like doing it and because in Alabama it’s freaking HOT outside in June.

Monster #2 (in gray business suit with coat off, sleeves rolled up, green eyeshade; carrying calculator, shaking long adding machine tape at me): The economy is in the toilet. No one is buying anything from anybody. Your clients sell things to other people. They can’t sell anything because no one has any money to buy. They’ll all go belly-up and you’ll be out of business too. It’s a fact. You can’t change it. You can’t get any new clients because no one has any money. Just accept it and die.

Me: That’s pretty harsh. Yeah, that last one was unhappy and wasn’t making any money, but it didn’t have too much to do with the economy. If you can’t decide what you are selling or how to ship it to the people who want to buy it, it’s kind of hard to make an online store successful.

Monster #2: You spent weeks agonizing about that one. Who was it who wasted all that energy on ways to make an impossible person happy and an impossible business work? Who was it who was so timid that she didn’t even pursue payment on that last invoice that Impossible Client told you to stuff because she wasn’t about to give you one more dime?

Me: It wasn’t exactly my fault she didn’t make a million dollars overnight. I bent over backwards to help her make the store a success. I didn’t even invoice her for a lot of the time I spent on her project.

Monster #1: Sucker.

Me: No, I’m not!

Monster #1: Are too. They walk all over you and you let them.

Monster #2: And what do you get out of it? You didn’t get paid! You lost another client! She’s going to go tell everybody how bad you are and no one will ever hire you again and you might as well quit right now. Just quit before they have another chance to hurt you!

Me (suddenly enlightened): Wait a minute. Wait. You monsters are trying to protect me? You’re telling me to quit so they won’t hurt me??

Monster #1: Quit now. Don’t hurt.

Monster #2: You need protection! You aren’t very good at looking after yourself, are you? What do you get out of this except stress and no sleep and no money?

Me: I help people. I have skills and talents that I use to help other people make money and show off their own skills and talents.

Monster #1: snort.

Me: Hey. I like helping people.

Monster #2: Then where are the people for you to help? Why aren’t they lined up outside the door?

Me (thinking): Probably because they don’t know about me.

Monster #3 (a ghostly outline materializing, floating in the air, a faint whisper): You haffffff to be invisssssssible.

Monster #2: Lie low. Don’t rock the boat.

Monster #1: growl.

Me: (thinking harder) You know, monsters, I’ve done that for a very long time. Let’s try it another way for a change and see what happens.

Monster #3: You’llllllll be sorrrrrrrrry.

Monster #2: They’ll point at you and laugh. They’ll grind up your bones and make bread from them. They’ll suck you dry and spit out the husk.

Monster #1: Quit. Now.

Me: I’ll make a deal with you. Let me try this for a while and let’s see what happens. Together. You have my permission to help keep me safe, and I promise to listen when you say something that I can act upon. Accountant monster, I should have listened when you started poking me about Impossible Client months ago. You were right.

Monster #2: (shocked) I was right? I mean — of course I was right. But you agree with that? You actually think I was right?

Me: Yes, you were right. And I thank you for trying to point it out to me. I didn’t listen because… hey, it was the monster talking. But I promise to listen when you are helping.

Monster #3: Invisssssssssible.

Me (suddenly and completely enlightened): Dear ghost, you know something? I know what you are trying to protect me from. There was a time when I had to be invisible. A time when I had to lie low because I had no power and no way to protect myself. (gently puts arms around the amorphous mist) Ghost, I’m not seven years old anymore. Those people are dead and they can’t hurt me any more. I’m grown up and I am myself and I wear an invisible crown of sovereignty now — see it?

Monster #1 (pointing): Crown!

Me: Yes!

Monster #3: Soverrrrrrrreignty.

Me: Yes! Monsters, the plan is this: I am going to take this down time to revamp my website. Take stock of the services I offer. Figure out who I can help, and how, and why. I am going to say “This is who I am, and this is what I do, and this is what my services are worth.” I’m going to quit hiding. I’ll go out and meet people. You’ll be my bodyguards, just as you always have been, but you’ll be behind me instead of in front. You’ll be ready to protect, but you won’t hold me back. Agreed?

Monster #1: Kick ass!

Me: When needed.

Monster #1: When needed.

Monster #2: Okay. But I might still point out if I see something screwy about to happen.

Me: That’s your job.

Monster #3 (worried, but willing to try): Agreeeeeeeeeeed.

And now it’s December.

I lost three clients this year. I’ve gained eleven. My website is redone and is still being improved. I’m on Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn. The blog is back from the dead. A friend I hadn’t heard from in years called me a week or two ago and said “My God, what happened to you? You are everywhere!”

My accountant monster has been kept very busy setting up the systems to make sure I get paid and don’t give away too much without getting something back in return. My ghost monster sometimes still plucks at me with anxious fingers to pull me back into obscurity, but now I know why and can reassure it that I am safe out here in public. My bodyguard monster stands behind me at all times and is ready to protect if I need protection. It’s comforting to know I can unleash him, even though I’ve never needed to.

Thank you, monsters.

BIG thank you to Havi Brooks of The Fluent Self, who first taught me to speak to monsters instead of hiding from them. And to Kate, who pointed out the invisible crown.