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Increase your web site’s exposure with PHP Dir Submit

Brenda — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 03:16:13 +0000

If you have had a business web site for any length of time you know that getting traffic to your site is about as challenging as getting customers to walk through the door of your brick and mortar store. Just building your site does not guarantee anyone is going to visit it. You need to make your site visible and offer value and content to your users. One of the ways you can increase your site’s visibility is by getting your business web site listed in directories. Getting listed in directories will increase your site’s visibility while also generating backlinks to your site. Getting quality backlinks is a major player when it comes to helping your site rise to the top of the search engines.

Along with visibility you need to offer quality content to your users. This can be done by writing articles that help your users solve their problems. Another aspect of quality content is to offer tips, tricks and industry news to your users. But, just adding this content to your site won’t do you any good if no one is going to see or read it. To solve this dilemma you need to get your content out there in front of your customers eyes. One of the best ways this can be done is by submitting articles to multiple article directories. This gives you maximum exposure for your content while at the same time generating even more of those coveted back links to your web site to help it climb the search engine ladder.

Along with submitting your site to directories and submitting your content to article sites, another effective way to help users find you in the internet maze is to bookmark your site and content on social bookmarking sites. Bookmarking your site and content is equivalent to having a vote out there for your information. It shows that users have found your site and content valuable and useful enough to bookmark it. And once again, you will generate even more back links to your site and content and by now you should realize how those back links will help you.

Now manually submitting to hundreds of directories, article sites, and social bookmarks can be a labor intensive task that is quite frankly, boring and time consuming. Automating this task can be a great time-saver in getting these jobs done. One great way to automate this task is by using PHP Dir Submit to help speed up the process of these jobs.

PHP Dir Submit is a 3-in-1 directory submitter script that allows you to submit your site to web directories, your articles to article directories and enables you to bookmark your site and content using social bookmarking. PHP Dir Submit comes pre-loaded with 300 web directories to submit your site to, 300 article directories to submit your article content to and 300 social bookmarking sites where you can bookmark your content and articles.
Another great feature with PHP Dir Submit is the ability to add your own sites to submit to. This allows you to add local directories in your area to submit your site to. Along with allowing you to target customers in your local community, you can also create your own localized directory submitter that you can offer to other businesses in your community. This will increase your web site’s traffic and exposure and give you a huge boost in your local community for offering such a valuable service to local business owners. Along with an increase in exposure and traffic you will have the ability to build your email marketing list to a valuable segment of your local community; other business owners!

As you can see there are great benefits when using PHP Dir Submit.

1 Increase your site’s exposure
2 Get more traffic to your site
3 Offer value to your customers
4 Increase your back links
5 Offer a great service to your business community
6 Help other local business owners
7 Build a quality email list

If you are at a cross roads on how to begin promoting your business, PHP Dir Submit is a great place to start. Check out their demo and give it a try today.

4 Tips for Marketing Your Business Online

Brenda — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 01:16:46 +0000

No matter what type of online business you have, or what kind of product or service you are promoting or selling, you will find that marketing your business online is essential. You have to remember that the online world is huge and in some ways it is actually bigger than the real world market. For example there are billions of websites on the Internet today and hundreds of billions of web pages. So to get your website or web page noticed out of all those other pages you will need to market your website. But the good news is if you are a local business, your competition is smaller than when competing against everyone on the internet in your industry.

Here we are going to be going over 4 tips for marketing your business online that you can use to market your website. We will be going over both paid and free methods of getting visitors to your website. Of course you need to remember that for the most part, paid advertising and marketing will almost always outperform free advertising every time. This is not to say that free advertising doesn’t work, we simply mean you will get better results from the paid methods.

One of the first types of advertising you should look into is e-zine advertising. E-zines are basically a magazine that is distributed on the Internet and just like all types of magazines the owners of these e-zines are looking for advertisers to advertise in their magazine. All you really have to do is to find an e-zine that specializes in your niche and/or in your local area and contact the owner about placing an ad in their next e-zine. The price you will end up paying will normally depend on how many subscribers the e-zine has. You will obviously end up paying more for an e-zine that goes out to 200,000 people as opposed to an e-zine that only has 2,000 subscribers.

The second way to start to advertise your website is by using a pay per click website. However if you don’t know what you’re doing you could end up losing a lot of money on this type of advertising. So it is recommended you learn how to set up your campaigns so you will not be wasting your money. There are many people who have started their own pay per click campaigns without knowing what they were doing and ended up losing a lot of money. So make sure you get advice before you begin, it could end up saving you a lot of money.

A great way to advertise your business is by writing articles about issues in your industry. This gives you the opportunity to connect with potential clients and impart your knowledge in your field. This type of marketing is especially helpful for service businesses. It allows you to show how knowledge, tools and resources are required to perform the service you are offering. While there are some hard-core DIYers, many people prefer to not be bothered and have a professional do the task for them. Article marketing is your opportunity to show potential customers why you are the right choice for the job.

And finally for the last free method of our 4 tips for marketing your business online, you should start building your own email list targeted to the interest of your niche. You can do this by offering the visitors to your site a free newsletter that centers around your niche. The reasoning behind building a list is that you can take a person that visits your site and continue to market to them through the list. You may even end up promoting some affiliate programs to your list as a way to bring in even more money from your site.

If you are a local business, you are much better off focusing on the competition in your location rather than trying to compete with the entire world. This will make your marketing tasks easier and allow you to see results faster.

Article Writing Ideas for Business Owners

Brenda — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 07:57:49 +0000

Trying to churn out article writing ideas for small business owners can be a never ending battle.

You find yourself wearing many hats in trying to juggle every aspect of your business and trying to keep fresh content on your web site, fan page and twitter account can have you pulling your hair out.

To help get you started I am going to give you some quick and easy methods you can use when looking for article writing ideas.

Back to the Basics:
Though your business is familiar to you, keep in mind that your customers are not as familiar and gifted in your business products and services.

Just writing about the basic aspects of your business can provide your customers with a great value while allowing them to see how talented and knowledgeable you are about your business.

Don’t underestimate the basics of your business!

Pick up a Magazine:
You probably subscribe to magazines dedicated to your trade. Looking over these magazines with your article writing hat on can help to spark many new article ideas that you may not have thought about before.

Read trade magazines with a fresh perspective to generate more article writing ideas!

Google Wonder Wheel:
The Google Wonder Wheel can give you some great article writing ideas if you find yourself experiencing writer’s block.

The wonder wheel will also show you what ideas Google thinks is related to your search and will enable you to quickly locate many topics to write about.

A few issues with the Google Wonder Wheel is that you will need to be sure your Google Insights preference is turned off or Google won’t show you the option to access the wonder wheel.

Using Google's Wonder Wheel for Article Writing Ideas

Once you have Google Insights off you will want to enter your keyword and click search, after which, you will notice the wonder wheel listed as an option under Google’s ‘All Results’ category. Clicking this will bring up the wonder wheel with your search term listed in the center of the wheel and related topics spiking off the wonder wheel.

You can click the related topics to keep drilling down in your niche and uncover other article writing ideas you may have not considered.

Get familiar with Google’s Wonder Wheel to easily uncover article ideas!

Google Trends:
Another great way to come up with ideas for your blog is to see what Google Trends has to say. Now many times Google Trends will tend to be more closely related to more popular current trends, but you can enter your keyword in the trends search and get information on the latest trends in your industry.

Stay on the cutting edge with Google Trends.

Google News:
Now I really not trying to ‘Google’ you out here, but Google does have a lot of great resources for generating article writing ideas. And another great resource is Google News. Doing a search for your industry keywords in Google News will give you the latest buzz about what is going on in your business industry.

To help make your life even easier, you can set up a Google Alert and have the results automatically emailed to you as often as you like. This way you will have Google sending you ideas on a continuous basis. This is a great resource that comes to you and alleviates you having to go out and do manual searches to look for article ideas.

Let Google News send you article ideas right in your inbox!

While these are just a few samples of strategies you can use to get article writing ideas for your small business blog, they should give you plenty of ideas to keep you busy for quite a while.

Once you start churning out those article ideas don’t forget to set up an Article Marketing Plan.

Article Marketing Plan

Brenda — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 22:59:35 +0000

Having an Article Marketing Plan is vital to your business success. Article marketing by itself won’t benefit your business much without a dedicated strategy. Article Marketing should be viewed as another tool to reach your customers and generate traffic. Careful planning will help you to be successful with article marketing.

Keep it Consistent Putting together and submitting a few articles will get you some exposure, but not near the amount you will want or need. Developing a consistent article writing plan will train the search engines to keep coming back to see what you have come up with next.

Writing articles on a consistent basis can be a difficult task to keep up with, especially if you have a ton of other jobs to attend to in your business. Creating a steady and consistent plan will help you to stay focused. Even if you can only write articles once a week or every other week, you are better off going with a realistic writing plan that you can stick with rather than trying to do too much at once and end up being overwhelmed which will only result in you giving up all together.

Sticking to a realistic plan will help you to begin to see results. It may not be instant results, but you will see results nonetheless. The most important aspect of your article marketing plan will be to deliver on a consistent basis.

Your customers and the search engines will know that you deliver and always have fresh content. They will keep checking in on you to see what the latest news is in your industry.

Writer’s Block Trying to figure out what topics to write about can be a frustrating task for many business owners Coming up with good ideas can be tough! An easy method to find new ideas for writing articles is to stay on top of news and trends in your industry. Staying on top of news and trends will have a couple of benefits for your business and article writing, you will be the first to have the latest info and will draw customers to you for your knowledge and you will have a good supply of new topics to write about.

An easy way to keep on top of trends in your industry is to create a Google alert. You can do this by going to Google and entering your keyword and doing a search on it. Once the search is complete you can select the option to set up a Google alert for that search and have it emailed to you automatically as often as you want.

You can get more tips for coming up with article ideas on our Article Ideas for Business Owners post.

Reuse your Content Rewriting your articles is another way of making the most out of your content. Having a unique article to submit to various directories will help you to avoid submitting duplicate content and will keep the article directories happy with your work.

Try to avoid (as much as you can) submitting the same article to each site. The directories like to think they are your top priority and you are giving them your very best work. They don’t like to feel like they are second best and getting your hand-me-downs.

Having variations of each article to submit to the article directories will allow you to leverage your work and get the most use out of your work. You won’t need to worry about duplicate content and you will be able to reach even more readers.

Write like you Talk You want to be sure that you keep your readers engaged. You don’t want to ‘wow’ them with technical talk that will go over their heads and only result in making you look like a show-off. Try to write in a conversational manner: write like you talk.

Your readers don’t want to be impressed, they want valuable information they can use that will help them with their problem. Remember that there is one reader at a time reading your article. Talk to that reader like you would any other customer in your business. Customers will be more likely to pay attention to your advice and will feel more at ease when reading your articles.

Submission Rotation Another part of your article marketing plan should be to alternate the article sites you submit your content to. This will help you to reach more people and avoid having to come up with a ton of variations of your articles..

Using just a few of the different top article directories will be sufficient. This will allow you to develop a name and following on each directory and will help to brand you as a top player in your industry. EzineArticles, SearchWarp, GoArticles and ArticleBase are a few of the top article directories you can use.

Article Marketing Plan Recap

Write consistently
Create a schedule and follow it
Keep up with news and trends by setting up Google alerts
Rewrite your articles to get the most out of them
Provide your readers with valuable information they can use
Keep readers interested by talking to them (not at them) like you would any other customer in your business
Submit to the top article directory sites

Simple SEO Article Writing

Brenda — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 22:55:12 +0000

Effectively using SEO article writing can greatly increase your chances of having your article rise to the top of the search engines for the subject you are writing about. But it is important that they search engines know what your article is about to be able to list it in the organic search results for the keywords you are targeting.

That’s where SEO article writing comes in to play. You see, even though the search engines have come a long way over the years, the search engines aren’t quite as smart as everyone thinks they are. They need help in determining what it is you are talking about in your article. If you confuse them too much they don’t know what to think and won’t list you for anything in the search results.

So the search engines need your help and that is where you need to put your SEO article writing skills to work. Writing articles optimized for the search engines is not as complicated as it sounds. Some of the main points you need to target when SEO article writing are:

Making sure your keyword is in the title.
- You want to keep your keyword or keyword phrase in the title and preferably in the correct order.
- You should also try and keep your keyword at the beginning of the article title if at all possible.
You should place your keyword in the first paragraph of your article.
- Once again, your goal here is to try and keep it as close to the beginning of the paragraph as possible.
You should also close your article with your keyword.
- Here you will want to try and keep your keyword or keyword phrase as close to the end of the last paragraph as possible.
You also want to sprinkle your keyword phrase throughout the article body itself.
- Now you don’t want to have your keyword used so often that it makes your article sound unrealistic and makes the search engines see your article as keyword stuffing, but enough that it lets the search engines know what your article is about.
- Most experts agree that when you are SEO article writing you should shoot for a keyword density of around 1-4%.
Another aspect of SEO article writing you should be targeting is using Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) in your articles.
- Using LSI basically means that you should be using similar terms in your articles. That would mean getting out your thesaurus and using synonyms in your articles.
- When people talk about a subject they most often use various terms to refer to the subject they are talking about.
- You might refer to your abs as your stomach, tummy or belly as well as your abs. Interchanging these words will help the search engine spiders to determine what your content is about.
- It is also helping to exchange these words with your main keyword if you find yourself using your keyword too much and in jeopardy of keyword stuffing your articles.

Though this form of SEO article writing may seem complicated to you, once you get used to writing in this form it will become second nature to you. Keep in mind that SEO article writing is only the beginning. The real meat hits the road when you develop an article marketing plan and work on getting backlinks to your articles.

How to Upgrade WordPress Manually or Automatically

Brenda — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 22:47:56 +0000

Knowing how to upgrade WordPress is an important skill that you will need to have if you want to keep your WordPress blog up to date.

There are many reasons you want to keep your WordPress blog up to date. Most importantly are security issues. Keeping your WordPress installation up to date will ensure that you have plugged up the latest security holes in your blog.

Of course there are always new features, templates and plugins that come along with each new WordPress upgrade. Being able to take advantage of new WordPress plugins, features and themes will ensure your blog is always on the cutting edge of technology.

*Important! Before upgrading WordPress either automatically or manually you must:

Check the requirements to make sure your host is running the required versions of PHP and MySQL.
Make a backup of your database so you are sure that you don’t lose any of your posts and pages.
Make sure your plugins and theme will work with the upgraded WordPress installation.
Disable your plugins for the upgrade process by using the Bulk Action to deactivate all your plugins at once.
If your plugins or theme will not work with the new WordPress installation you will either have to wait to upgrade until the plugins and theme are upgraded also to work with the new WordPress version, or you will have to forgo using the plugins and/or theme.
There have been times where I have used a plugin or theme that was not upgraded to work with the latest WordPress version. Sometimes I was successful and sometimes I wasn’t. I do not recommend using plugins or themes that have not been approved with the upgraded WordPress theme if you want to have a stable WordPress installation.

Manually upgrade WordPress First I will go over how to upgrade WordPress manually.

To upgrade WordPress manually you will need to download the updated WordPress version.
You will also need to unzip WordPress to a folder on your hard drive (try not to forget where you put it).
Now you will need to open up your FTP program and log into your site.
You will want to note where you WordPress is installed. Whether it is in your root folder or whether you have installed it in another folder such as /blog.
Once you have located your WordPress installation folder on your web site, you will want to navigate to the updated WordPress files you unzipped on your hard drive (you did remember where you put it, didn’t you?).
You will then need to upload the upgraded WordPress files on your hard drive (folders and all) to the corresponding folders on your web site. Important! The wp-content folder is the only exception to overwriting the files. If you have any special WordPress themes or plugins you are using you will not want to overwrite this folder or you will lose your WordPress theme and have to re-upload them.
After you have uploaded all your WordPress files, you will want to go back to your browser and log into your WordPress blog on your site.
If your database needs to be updated also then WordPress will display a link to update your database that you can click on and follow directions.
At this point you will want to make sure everything is working properly as well as check the WordPress version to make sure you uploaded everything correctly and your WordPress upgrade took effect.

Automatically install WordPress theme If you like to take the safe and easy route like me then you will want to let WordPress do all the work for you and upgrade WordPress automtically.

To put WordPress to work you will need to first log into your blog.
Once you are logged in you should see a message at the top of the screen stating you need to update WordPress if you have an out of date installation. If you don’t see a message you will want to go to your dashboard and click the updates option.
You will see your version of WordPress displayed with a message as to whether or not you need to upgrade WordPress.
WordPress will ask you for your connection information and proceed to update once you have entered this information.
Note: If you customized the default or classic theme then you will need to back up these files to re-upload one the WordPress upgrade is completed or you will need to manually upgrade WordPress.
Once you are sure everything is working correctly you can go in and enable your plugins.

Once you get the hang of it, updating WordPress is not that difficult. It is not something you will be doing daily but as people find new security holes and add new features, you will find that you will need to know how to update WordPress periodically.

Getting a Facebook Business URL without a Personal Account

Brenda — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 22:50:46 +0000

Wow….I think Facebook purposely makes it completely and utterly confusing to do anything related to business, especially when it comes to trying to set up a business URL. Trying to setup a Facebook business URL without having a personal account is like pulling teeth. So if you are utterly and totally confused and pulling your hair out then read below.

Well for starters there is bad news, at this point in time it is not possible to get a business URL without having a personal account, it doesn’t have to be yours but you have to have someone with a Facebook personal account to be an administrator of the business fan page.
You have to designate a personal account as administrator of the business account to be able to get the URL. Now the personal account won’t show any connection to the business fan page, but you still have to have one. It doesn’t necessarily have to be yours, it can be an employees, a friend, spouse, relative, etc.
First you have to make sure you add a personal account as an Administrator on your business account or you will not be able to create a Facebook URL.
You have to make sure you use the ‘Add Admin’ on the home page and not the ‘Linked Accounts’ on the Settings page.
Then you have to add someone as admin who has a personal profile (yourself, friend, relative, spouse, etc.).
Next you have to make sure that person already has a Username URL so you don’t inadvertently assign your business URL to the new admins personal page
Then you can proceed to adding a URL for any of the fan pages you are administrator of.

Oh…and if you get the URL wrong…too bad, you cant change it. Your only recourse is to keep the misspelled URL or to delete your fan page and start over. Nowhere on Facebook is this information laid out so you can follow it. You have to search through other people’s posts who have already messed it up and then figured it out to make sure you do it right the first time since you don’t get a second chance. The only way other people have had success getting some kind of help from Facebook is to either lodge an infringement complaint or pretend to apply for a job!

Difference between Facebook Personal Account and Business Account

Brenda — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 22:49:53 +0000

In this post I am going to try and clear up the confusion between personal and business facebook accounts.

Should You Have a Business or Personal Facebook Account?

Many people aren’t sure if they should have a personal or business account on Facebook. Of course this is going to depend mainly on what your goals are. If you just want to connect with friends and chat about your weekend, what your having for dinner, what your watching on TV…go personal. If you want to build your business and connect with customers, then go with a business account. Remember, your customers want to know what you can do for them, not what you had for dinner last night.

Can You Have Both a Business and a Personal Facebook Account?

Now the next question is can you have both? Well, the answer to that is yes and no. Let me try to explain…
Scenario 1 If you don’t have a personal Facebook account at all and you don’t want one, then you can just sign up for a business account.and forget about having a personal account.
Scenario 2 If you already have a personal account then you you can add a Fan Page (same as a business account). The only issue with this is that if your personal account is deleted for some reason then your business account goes down with it.
Scenario 3 If you already have a personal account and don’t want it connected in any way, shape or form to your business account then you need to log out of your personal account, and create a business account. To do this you will need to get a separate email from what you are currently using on your personal Facebook account. You can easily get a new gmail account. *Keep in mind that it is against Facebook’s rules to have a separate business and personal account, so proceed at your own risk! **Also keep in mind that it is against Facebook’s rules to open a personal account and use it as a business account. Such as having your first and last name replaced with your business account in your profile. I have seen this done before but I personally don’t think it is worth taking the chance on since it is much easier to detect than just opening a business account with a new email address.

Straight from the mouth of Facebook If you create a profile for your business, your account may be disabled for violating our Terms of Use. If you have questions about how to best leverage your Facebook Page, please check out our Insider’s Guide or FAQ. I personally think that since they came up with this new rule after many people already had signed up for personal accounts that it is ridiculous to punish loyal users for being on the cutting edge in their market…but then again, Facebook is not asking for my opinion =)

Difference between Facebook Personal and Business Accounts

So what is the main difference between a personal Facebook account and a business Facebook account?

Personal Facebook Account – With a personal account you can go out and find friends and add them at will (assuming they accept your request).
Business Facebook Account – With a Fan Page, (or business account) your fans have to come to you (alleviates the spamming issue). So you have to be a bit more diligent and work harder to build up a Fan Page than you do to build up a personal account. Your best bet (if you are going with a business account) is to network together all your social accounts (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, ect.) offer some quality content, tips, advice and articles to your users.

Should You Have a Business or Personal Facebook Account?

Can Hosting Companies Charge for WordPress?

Brenda — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 22:53:35 +0000

If have been wondering can hosting companies charge for WordPress, well then you are with the wrong hosting company.

Well, technically a hosting company can charge for anything they choose. But very few are going to charge for WordPress. With blogs being so popular and WordPress being the most popular blog platform used, most companies are going to offer the WordPress platform for free in an effort to gain your business. There are many other add ons that a web host can choose to charge for, but very few hosts are going to charge for WordPress.

At the risk of making this article too short and to the point, I would suggest you look for a different host if your web host is charging you for WordPress. It is equivalent to charging you for cream and sugar for your coffee. You bought the coffee and cream and sugar naturally go with your coffee. You bought your hosting and WordPress naturally goes along with your hosting. There are many hosts out there competing for your business, I would never go with a host who charged for WordPress.

Think about it. Once you sign up with a web host it is unlikely you will change anytime soon. The hassle of changing this over is just too much of a pain unless the hosting company is so bad that you have no choice. Once a web host gets you to sign up with them it is likely that they will have your business for a long time to come so it is worth it for them to give you WordPress for free just to obtain and keep your business long term.

It is worth your time and effort to look around for a good host, one that won’t charge you separately for WordPress. You can find many reviews for hosting companies to help you in your search for a quality web host.

Some of the best hosts out there are 1&1, Host Gator and I personally use eHostPros. I have been using them for about eight years and I have never, ever paid for WordPress. They are quick to answer my questions and rarely have any downtime.

Whatever host you go with, just be sure you aren’t being charged for WordPress. There are just too many other options and other hosting companies vying for your business out there, especially in this economy.

So, to answer your question ‘Can hosting companies charge for WordPress?’ the answer is yes, but I would never use a hosting company that charged for WordPress.

How to install a WordPress theme

Brenda — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 22:51:39 +0000

So you have hunted high and low and found the perfect WordPress theme. Now you need to know how to install WordPress theme or it will just be a pretty file collecting dust on your hard drive. Installing a WordPress theme is not as complicated as many people think it is. The thing that tends to confuse people is that there are two different methods you can use when trying to figure out how to install WordPress theme.

Manually install WordPress theme First I will go over how to install WordPress theme manually to help you get familiar with the WordPress structure.

To install a WordPress theme manually you will need to download the theme, which I am assuming you have done by now.
You will also need to unzip the WordPress theme to a folder on your hard drive (try not to forget where you put it).
Now you will need to fire up your FTP program and FTP to your site.
At this point you will want to navigate to the themes folder by going to the ‘wp-content’ folder and then the ‘themes’ folder.
Once you are in the themes folder on your web site, you will want to navigate to the theme you unzipped on your hard drive (you did remember where you put it, didn’t you?).
You will then need to upload the theme on your hard drive (folder and all) to the themes folder on your web site.
After your all FTP’d out you will want to go back to your browser and log into your WordPress blog on your site.
You will then go to the ‘Appearance’ option on the left side menu and select the ‘Themes’ option.
At this point you should be able to see your theme listed as an option. If not then you probably uploaded it as a folder within a folder and will need to double check it.
You should now be able to preview and then activate your theme by selecting the appropriate options listed under your theme.

Automatically install WordPress theme If you are lazy like me you will want to let WordPress do all the work for you. So now we will learn how to install WordPress theme by letting WordPress get down and dirty.

To put WordPress to work you will need to first log into your blog.
You will navigate to the ‘Appearance’ option on the left side of the menu.
Next you are going to click on the ‘Themes’ option located under the ‘Appearance’ tab.
Once you are under the ‘Themes’ section, you will see ‘Manage Themes’ at the top of the page. Next to the ‘Manage Themes’ tab you will see the ‘Install Themes’ tab which will probably be grayed out. You will want to click on the ‘Install Themes’ tab to make it the active tab.
Now you have a couple options here.
- Option one is that you don’t have a theme in mind yet and want to search for one. In this case you will select the options you are looking for and click Search. Once you have the results up on screen you can scroll through until you find one that you like and want to use. At this point it is only a matter of previewing the theme to make sure it is what you are looking for and if it is, then you can click Install and let WordPress do its magic.
- Option two assumes that you have already downloaded the theme you want to use. In this case you will want to select the Upload option that you will find available under the ‘Install Themes’ tab. Once you have selected the Upload option you will want to browse to the theme file you downloaded and select it. (Yes WordPress will even unzip the file for you. How’s that for service!) Then it is just a matter of clicking ‘Install Now’ and let WordPress go to town.

I prefer to let WordPress do the dirty work and install the themes for me. But it is a good idea to get familiar with FTP’ing to your site and taking a look at how things are structured within WordPress. That way if you have to edit, alter or repair your WordPress theme you will know how to find your way around the WordPress world. Once you know how to install WordPress theme you will wonder why it seemed like such a complicated task. You may even find yourself customizing and making your own WordPress themes.