WP Fort - WordPress Tips and Tricks

Starting a Business With WordPress

by Rhys

April 20th, 2011

biz plan So you are looking to start your own business, and you don’t want to spend a lot of cash to do it. Is WordPress a viable option for starting your own web design company? I think so, and I will tell you why after the jump.

The Basics

We can start with the selling points of WordPress, the biggest of which is its price. FREE. That’s a good place to start, right? There are other options out there that are free as well though, Drupal, Joomla! etc. So why would you want to mess around with WordPress? Because not only is WordPress free, its also extremely easy to use, and has a huge community that can help you get started.

In addition to its price and ease of use, your potential clients will like that they can modify their own content without knowing any code. This is a great value, and is a core reason to choose WordPress to get started.

This list goes on for the reasons to use WordPress, security, updates, plugins, and so on. Needless to say, WordPress can do everything the others can, and then some.

Okay, I’ve Got WordPress, Now What?

One of the first things I did when starting my web design business was try to find a way to make building websites easier & faster. It was during my quest to find this that I stumbled upon iThemes. They sell custom templates and layouts for WordPress, and they are easily modified to give you the custom web design feel. Recently they came out with a product called “Builder” (which I will talk about in depth in later posts) that has revolutionized how I build sites. With Builder, you should be able to create a custom website from start to finish in under 4 hours.

Some of you may wonder why I am always talking about iThemes products, and the facts are that they are hands down the best I have used. I have literally built my business using their products, and stand behind them 100%.

What About Hosting?

One of the hardest decisions you will need to make is where to host your sites, and how much to pay for it. I will try to make this choice a little easier by giving you a suggestion.

HostGator.

After going through 2 other hosting solutions, which gave me many headaches, I decided to give HostGator a shot. Without a doubt this has been the single best move I have made as a developer. My site down-times are virtually gone, I can give each client their own cpanel (reseller account), and its easy to manage bandwidth. So stop your search, and go get a HostGator account, I could not recommend them enough!

Conclusion

To sum this all up, lets go through the steps you need to take to get started.

Step 1: Head over to www.wordpress.org and research as much as you can on WordPress.

Step 2: Get an account (reseller) @ www.hostgator.com

Step 3: Purchase the “All Access Theme Pass” from iThemes.

Step 4: ???

Step 5: Profit

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Categories General Wordpress, Tips & Tricks
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Money Makin’ Plugins : BackupBuddy

by Rhys

April 18th, 2011

WordPress Padlock If used correctly, WordPress can automate your income. Using a set of premium plugins that I have mentioned in the past, you can make more money, and help secure your future for good. Today I want to focus on BackupBuddy, a premium backup and migration plugin for WordPress.

Secure, Backup, Secure

Some of your clients will make it clear as day that their site’s security is paramount to anything else. If your client relys on their website to turn up new sales leads, or as a customer support tool, this is likely the case. So how can you calm their nerves, not increase your workload, and make a little money?

Enter BackupBuddy a premium wordpress plugin that can automate your backups, and make you look like a rock star all at the same time!

Setup

Setting up BackupBuddy could not be easier. It installs exactly the same as a normal plugin, and has a very intuitive user interface. You will be able to create a full backup of the site, which includes everything from pictures, to your database. This is unique for WordPress, there are no other tools out there that I know of that can do this cleanly. In fact, before this plugin, it would take me well over an hour to move a site, and there would generally be all sorts of issues that arose from doing so.

Automation

The next thing I recommend doing is finding a way to automatically send your backups somewhere safe. I use Amazon S3, and have all of my clients sites backup to it 1 time per month. Each of my clients pays me an additional $75/mo for this service, and have never complained about the pricing. The reason is, if their site goes down, I can have it up and running perfectly in under 10 minutes!

Setting up the automation is very easy, they give you the option of using an Amazon S3 account, or FTP. So you can choose what works best for you.

How Much Will I Make?

Depending on the market you serve, you can earn anywhere from an extra $50/mo, all the way to $250/mo for this service. I often times will couple this with google analytics and provide them a monthly written update on the health of their website.

If you have any questions on setting up BackupBuddy or questions on the service, please post in comments. I will respond to all questions asked there.

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Categories Plugins, Tips & Tricks, Uncategorized
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Top 5 Premium WordPress Plugins

by Rhys

April 11th, 2011

One of the major things that WordPress brings to the table is their huge selection of plugins. Most of the plugins that people use everyday are free, but in some cases the free plugins just do not make the cut. Here is a list of the top 5 most commonly used Premium WordPress Plugins that I use for clients, and myself on a very regular basis. In future posts I will do some in depth reviews of each of these products, as well as show you ways to use them to make you more money! For now, here is a sneak peak at whats to come!

5. Zopim (Chat Software)
If you are looking for a live chat plugin that is non invasive, easy to use, and affordable, Zopim is what you need. Their pricing is great, and they even have a “free” option for you to give it a try.

4. DisplayBuddy

If you are looking for a great way to display rotating images, banners, slideshows, or videos, this is the best plugin you can get hands down. Pricing is fair starting at $45, and right now they are even running a special for 25% off. So jump on over there and take a look.

3. PluginBuddy – “Mobile”

This plugin as made me a lot of money with client work. It can automatically detect what type of device is requesting your site, and serve up a mobile version of your site with very little extra work. If you have clients who are looking to have mobile versions of their sites (which most are now days) this is the best product out there to get it done. This is also priced really well at $45, and believe me, you will be able to make far more than that using this plugin!

2. Gravity Forms

If you are anything like me, the thought of hand coding web forms makes you want to throw up in your mouth a little bit. Luckily our friends over at Gravity Forms have that all taken care of. I use this plugin on almost every single site I build, and it is another plugin that will pay for itself with one job. I will write an in depth article about this plugin very soon, because there is so much to it that people don’t know. Pricing starts @ $39, and I highly recommend that everyone gets this one.

1. BackupBuddy

This plugin is installed on every single site I build. It has not only saved me countless hours of headaches, it makes me extra money on every single site. This plugin can easily backup, migrate, or restore entire WordPress installs with ease. Don’t even hesitate, go get this plugin TODAY, it will save your site and it will make you money. Don’t spend another minute not having your site backed up, get BackupBuddy TODAY!

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Categories Plugins, Tips & Tricks
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Why Should I Use WordPress?

by Rhys

April 7th, 2011

We should probably start at the basics, what is WordPress, and why should I use it? This question is easily answered as such: WordPress is a stable, secure, and user friendly Content Management System (CMS). It makes adding, editing, and manipulating content a total breeze. Whether it is a blog, or a corporate website, WordPress can do it all. On top of that, you can easily build a fully functional, high end, custom site in under a day.

In addition to those great things, this platform makes security quite trivial. Exercising some basic “security through obscurity”, you can have a site that would take a good hacker some time to get access to. However, in upcoming posts, I will show you ways to secure your site better, as well as create backups that you can restore your site from in minutes.

WordPress.com or WordPress.org, whats the difference?

The main difference between the two is that one is self hosted, and the other is hosted by WordPress. I exclusively work with WordPress.org (Self-Hosted) as it provides the greatest flexibility as it pertains to design and functionality. If you are looking to create a quick blog, and do not want to spend the time or money learning how to setup a web server, then go ahead and use WordPress.com.

What types of sites run WordPress?

There are a large number of top sites that are running WordPress, from Mashable.com to MileyCyrus.com. Given that the WordPress platform is so easily manipulated, you can pretty much create any type of site you like.

What about Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

You guessed it, WordPress is inherently optimized for search engines. However, you can further optimize it using such popular free plugins as Yoast’s WordPress SEO, or All In One SEO Pack, which I recommend highly! If you are looking to build a site that will work its way to the top of the search engines, you have made the right choice in choosing WordPress!

So where should I start?

Go over to WordPress.com and/or WordPress.org and start reading up on how to get started. If you are looking to go the way of hosting your own site, I suggest using HostGator as your hosting provider. I have over 20 sites that I host there personally, and they are terrific. Additionally, their support staff will even walk you through getting your first WordPress site up and running!

Then what?

Keep coming back to wpfort.com for more info! I will be publishing new articles that cover everything from plugins, to how-to guides. The schedule falls so that a new article will be published every Monday and Wednesday morning. So keep coming back, and commenting if you have questions.

If you have any articles that you would like for me to cover, feel free to head over to the contact page and send me a note!

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