Setup a Niche Site Using WordPress

Welcome to the new look for the WordPress Niche Site Blueprint.  I’ve updated this to both fit in with my new branding as well as make it more user friendly. Let’s get to it …

First things, some housekeeping, I define a Niche Site as an information site that provides great value through blog posts and affiliate recommendations. Maybe even your own products. I do not encourage the use of set and forget sites where you setup a sales page and leave it anymore than Google would.

The aim of this course is to help out those who have purchased PLR products to use it to setup a niche site. We will be looking at the technology and not the content.

I’d also like to thank Sue Fleckenstein for encouraging me to do this course. If you are one of her subscribers, I hope you get a lot of value out of it.

I encourage you to watch this first video before you begin. It will give you a solid foundation in what we’ll cover and what we won’t.

Module 1 Setting up WordPress

In this module we will look at the WordPress settings. To many people, this may seem simple; but there is a checklist of things you need to do to ensure your site is setup properly, securely and efficiently.
Takeaway from module 1

• It is very important you set the time zone so you can accurately schedule blog posts
• Pingbacks should be off otherwise it encourages spam blogs to backlink you to get a trackback to your site
• Use the format /%postname%/ for your blog
• Subscribe to learn more above and get a special resources to a blacklist for comments

Module 2 Creating Pages

In this lesson, we’ll be looking at the creation of pages. Some of this module will be very basic; but we’ll look at the basic pages required, how to set them up and how to make changes in bulk.
Takeaway from module 2

• The necessary pages to add are home, about, contact and blog
• You can bulk edit pages
• Sometimes a niche site will have the blog as the front page but you can change this under settings->reading

Module 3 Themes

This lesson contains 3 modules and will be looking a themes.
Part I
Takeway from Module 3 Part I

• Should look for niche sites to know which theme feel to use
• Theme chosen should always be responsive
• WordPress themes from WordPress.org are free and tested for safety
• You can use filters on WordPress.org whilst searching for theme
• If in doubt, use WordPress’s Twenty series theme

Part II
Takeaway from Module 3 Part II

• You can also find themes on the dashboard
• Can do a rough preview of the theme without installing (but limited to dummy data)
• Some themes allow for finer degrees of customisation, use filters to find such
• If you are looking for a great background, try Subtle Patterns

Takeway for Module 3 part III

• I accidentally said scrolling backgrounds stay in place; fixed backgrounds are the ones that remain frozen while the rest of the screen scrolls
• You can post your content and add images including galleries to see how the theme responds to such a look
• Remove the link from your images so there is no linking of the image to the image file
• Remember, different themes have different widget areas

Module 4 Adding Posts

Takeaway from module 4 Part I

• Posts are different from pages in that they have a homepage where all posts are listed chronologically
• Pages are more stand alone
• Can edit permalinks or rather slug
• Using the more link can ensure the blog’s homepage doesn’t get too populated with full summary data
• You can turn off the comments at any time
• Don’t forget to add categories, and tags which are like chapters and indexes

Takeaway from module 4 Part II

• Spartan clipboard is a valuable asset to keep multiple data on clipboard and is used throughout this video training
• Bulk Content Creator is a powerful plugin that allows you to enter unformatted text or html in bulk and have many posts created at once
• CKEDITOR is an online service that will transform your rich formatted text into an html equivalent
• There are tricks you can do with Microsoft Word so your document is prepared for pasting when you are finished writing

Module 5 Monetising Your Site

Takeaway from module5 Part I

• Multi plugin staller is a powerful plugin tool that can install many plugins at once
• You need to either copy full plugin url from wordpress.org or the slug of the url
• You can get a list of the plugins used for copy and paste by signing up in the header section of this site
• Video goes through WordPress SEO

Takeaway from module 5 Part II

• Add a contact form to page using shortcode to save email address from being revealed to spammers
• Important to backup site – use backup to dropbox for a free solution
• Get a free dropbox account here
• The most important file to backup is wp-config and most important folder (with files) is wp-content
• MUST always backup database
• mpress hide from search protects your download page from search
• mpress hide from search doesn’t work well on posts
• Pretty Link Lite allows you to track affiliate links
• Video goes through WordPress SEO, backup to dropbox, mpress hide from search and pretty link lite

Takeaway from module 5 Part III

This module looks at plugin called advanced advertising system. It looks very useful to monetise your high traffic blog by personally selling banner space.

Next Steps

Thanks so much for watching! Don’t forget to share if you liked this video and comment below. Let me know what you found most insightful.

Also note that some things may have changed since filming this around 2015. If you have any questions feel free to reach out or join the newsletter to keep in the loop. Thanks!