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Ever take the time to think of and enter tags to your post relevant to the subject you’re writing about only to have them not appear once you publish your post?

To display your tags you would copy and paste the following code to your theme’s single.php file.

<p><?php the_tags(); ?></p>

Where you want to place it is dependent to you and your theme. But you would normally want to place it along with the Author, Category and Comment Count section of your post.

Once you’ve saved and uploaded the file, refresh a blog post you’ve included tags with and you should notice the tags now appear within the post.

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When I first started and created a WordPress blog I noticed one of the default plugins that were included was the Akismet Plugin. Curious as to what it was, I visited the plugin homepage and soon discovered the greatness and importance the plugin has to offer.

The Akismet plugin basically detects if comments and trackbacks submitted to your blog are spam. It does this by automatically running tests on each comment submitted to your site, once comment spam is detected and identified, they are labeled accordingly making your job in deleting them easier since the work is being done for you. No more second guessing, Akismet allows you to spend time on more important matters with your blog.

To install Akismet, simply head to your plugins page and since Akismet is already included when you install WordPress all you have to do is activate the plugin. If you’ve deleted the Akismet plugin you can download it via the Akismet website.

Once the plugin is installed, you’ll need to enter a Akismet API key for the plugin to work. If you already have a WordPress.com account you can find the Akismet API key on your profile page or you can visit https://apikey.wordpress.com/ to find your key.

If you don’t have a WordPress.com account and don’t want to bother registering for one, you can obtain an API Key by signing up for one on the akismet.com website. There are paid plans if you choose to purchase one or you can also sign up for a free plan as well. There’s a quick registration that you’ll have to fill out and the API Key will be emailed to you.

Retreive the API Key in your email and enter the API Key on the Akismet Configuration page on your WordPress dashboard. Click on Update Options and your Askimet plugin should now be working. A couple simple steps in installing Akismet will save you hours in the long run in determining whether your comments are spam or not. Happy Blogging!

Installing WordPress on your GoDaddy account is easier than you may think with the help of “Go Daddy Hosting Connection”. “Go Daddy Hosting Connection” allows you to install the WordPress application in a couple easy steps.

You’ll have to make sure that you have webhosting with GoDaddy before you can install WordPress. The automatic install via “Go Daddy Hosting Connection” will not work on GoDaddy free hosting accounts. In order to install WordPress on a GoDaddy free hosting account you will have to install WordPress manually. I’ll make a post soon on installing WordPress manually for those willing to go that venture.

To begin login to your GoDaddy account and click on Web Hosting.

Select the Webhosting you want to install WordPress on and click the green Launch button.

From your Hosting Dashboard you can go straight to the WordPress installation app by clicking on WordPress on the Install Apps window on the right.

Or you can hover over the Content tab and click on Go Daddy Hosting Connection.

WordPress should be the first application on the list of popular applications. Click on the WordPress logo or link.

Click on the “Install Now!” button to begin installation.

First step would be to select the compatible hosted domain you would like to use. Select the domain and click on the Next button.

Next step would be to set up the database. Be sure to take note of the following information you will be using to setup WordPress. You will be asked to enter information for the Database description and database password. Database Username is created automatically by GoDaddy.

You will then choose a directory to install WordPress in, the default being /WordPress. I would highly suggest changing the name of the directory to a word associated with your site. If you want WordPress to appear on the root, i.e. when visiting yourdomain.com not yourdomain.com/WordPress, then simply leave the field blank.

Finally you will select an Admin Name, Admin Password, Email and Blog Title. Keep note of the admin name and password as this will be the login info you will need to access your newly installed WordPress site. The email you enter will be the email where you will be receiving info from your WordPress site such as user comments, updates, and pingbacks. Once you’ve entered the entire necessary information click the Finish button.

You can view the status of your installation by clicking on the My Applications link.

From there you can view the progress of your WordPress install. The installation time varies, I’ve experienced waiting a day or two at most but sometimes it may take less than 24 hours. GoDaddy will send you an email you once the installation is complete.

WordPress 3.1 was just recently released and one of the new and most obvious features; the new admin bar that appears on your WordPress site at the top of your browser. The admin bar will only appear if you’re logged into your WordPress admin account. Now, some people might find this a bit annoying or redundant, for myself I tend to open my WordPress Admin console and WordPress blog in seperate tabs so I don’t see a need for it. If you would like to disable the admin bar here are the steps you would follow.

On your Dashboard head to Your Profile settings, once there you can view the “Show Admin Bar” options. By default it’s selected to appear when viewing site. By not selecting both the admin bar will not be shown.

If you would like to disable the admin bar for all users on your site, add the following code to your functions.php file:

What are your experiences with the new WordPress admin bar?

Purchasing and setting up web hosting through GoDaddy is more simple than you think. One drawback about GoDaddy is their user interface is just overloaded with links, buttons, and numerous attempts by them to have you buy more items. As long as you know how to get from point A to point B on GoDaddy and not stray away, you’ll have your hosting set up in no time, well at least within 24 hours, but we’ll get to that.

You’ll need a domain name obviously to link with your hosting, if you purchased the domain via GoDaddy then you can easily associate it with your hosting during set up. If you purchased your domain with another provider you’ll need to contact your domain registrar in finding out how to setup your nameservers to point to your GoDaddy hosting.

To purchase and set up GoDaddy Hosting, make sure you’re logged into your GoDaddy account. Click on Hosting and from there you’ll have 3 basic options to choose from. There are other types of hosting available with more storage space, bandwidth speed, cpu speed, etc., but for beginners or novices these 3 options should suffice.

Obviously the more you spend, the more you get, however you need to ask yourself if you really need that much more gigabytes of space, email accounts, and MySQL databases for your site. You can always choose the cheapest and upgrade at a later time, such as when the traffic for your site increases.

Now once you select your hosting you’ll come across a series of items that GoDaddy pushes you to buy. It’s kind of like exiting a theme park where all the vendors are giving it one last push for you to buy something before you leave.

Once you arrive at your shopping cart, pay attention to the right where the Order Summary box is, there you’ll see a link to enter a Promo Code.

Doing a simple Google search on GoDaddy promo codes should allow you to find current and updated promo codes which can be used to discount your order total. Promo codes can’t be combined, you’re only allowed to use one, so keep entering them until you get the biggest discount.

Once you’ve purchased your hosting and received your confirmation of purchase email, you can go ahead and start setting up the hosting account. You want to get into “My Account” and look under “My Products” on the left menu and click on “Hosting”.

From there you’ll come across a section that displays the web hosting you just purchased. Click on the “Launch” button which will open up a new tab/window to set up your new hosting account.

Agree with the Hosting Service Agreement and click “Next”.

Next you’ll create a username and password for your hosting. It’s very important that you remember this step because this user name and password is what you’ll use everytime you need to ftp files for your website.

Once you’ve created the username and password you will then select the domain you would like to link to your hosting. If you purchased it through GoDaddy your domain should be available through the drop down menu.

You’ll come across a couple options of the PHP version you want for your hosting and enabling Google Webmaster Tools to help Google access your site. I would leave the default setting as is since the higher PHP version and Google Webmaster Tools are good things to have.

The second to last page is the Confirmation page giving you a summary of your newly set up hosting account.

The last page gives you an account status notice that your hosting account is pending setup and may take up to 24 hours. Normally it takes way less and sometimes within the hour. Just check back often to see if the hosting account status has been set to ready. Once ready, you can now beginning uploading files to your website or using GoDaddy Connect to set up applications like Joomla or WordPress. Adios!

Installing WordPress on GoDaddy Hosting is as simple as a couple of clicks. I’m going to attempt my best to give you a step by step tutorial on how to do this. I do have a couple bits of advice for first timers to help try and put ease to the process.

1. Take a deep breath and make sure you’re in a comfortable environment to be able to concentrate solely on the task at hand.

2. Create a folder for your blog which will contain notes, set-up information, account info, etc. This folder will not contain your site files but instead serve as a place to go back to if you need information to access your site. It’s good to plan ahead, if you’re planning on creating more blogs it’s hard to remember every single username, password, blog email address, Facebook login, twitter login, etc. for each blog. Till this day I still tend to forget my case-sensitive passwords when logging onto my WordPress blogs.

3. Create a spreadsheet for your WordPress information, you’ll be needing to create various names, logins, passwords, for your database and WordPress blog. The set-up information can be overwhelming so it’s best to keep this handy should you ever have a need to go back to it. Store this spreadsheet in the folder your created for your blog.

4. Have an alternate email address ready which will be used when WordPress sends you notifications such as user comments and account information. The last thing you want is an important email from mom that you missed because it was surrounded by hundreds of comment notifications about your Justin Bieber post. You can also use this email account for social networking sites to help promote and market your blog. Other uses could include signing up for WordPress Plugins and Widgets which some require, commenting on other blogs, and signing up for forums related to your blog theme.

5. Obviously you can’t setup a WordPress blog on Godaddy if you haven’t purchased hosting. Our next post will give you a step by step guide to purchasing hosting with Godaddy for your WordPress blog. Till then, Adios!

When you create a post on WordPress and publish your post without selecting a category, you’re post by default gets placed under “Uncategorized”.

However this “Uncategorized” category seems very unprofessional and frowned open by seasoned bloggers. Unfortunately you can’t just delete this category but you can easily rename it to anything you would like. You can name it “Other”, “Miscellaneous” or something else much more creative.

To rename the Uncategorized Category simply go to your dashboard under “Posts” and click “Categories”.

Once in the Categories section hover your cursor over “Uncategorized” and click on “Edit”.

The “Edit Category” section for that particular category should appear and from there you can change the name from Uncategorized to any name of your choice. I would recommend to change the slug to the same name for consistency. Be sure to keep the slug lowercase. Once done click update and your Uncategorized Category has now been changed.

By default WordPress displays your post in all it’s entirety on the frontpage. Some of you may not find this appealing since it causes your reader to have to scroll all the way down on your front page to view other posts. By setting a cut off point you allow an excerpt of your post to be displayed giving the reader a choice to click through to view the entire post. This also allows your reader to view more of your posts which they might interest them as well.

The method for inserting a cut off point on your post is by inserting the <!––more––> tag. You can insert the tag manually or use the More button found on your editor. You can insert this tag anywhere on your post which creates a (more…) link which cuts off the rest of the post and links to the actual post page.

How to Customize the “(more…)” link

You can actually customize the more link to make it more descriptive such as (Read More…) or (Continue Reading…).

The easiest way to do this is to include your descriptive message in the more tag. So to customize your more link to (Read More…), your more tag would look like this:

<!––more Read More––>

To display as (Continue Reading…), your more tag would look like this:

<!––more Continue Reading––>