I did a live training session recently for a client, but I decided to do it as a live video on Facebook. It really was just me showing you how to craft the perfect blog post.

The main topics I covered were:

• Using Elementor to build a blog post.
• Content layout and making content visitor friendly.
• Image placement, single images, and gallery.
• Video embedding with Elementor.
• Featured image.

Video Notes

The video starts around the 5:00 minute mark. Prior to that is just me getting ready for the broadcast.

The tool I'm using is Elementor. Highly recommend you check it out, it's free but I'm showcasing the paid version. Check out Elementor here (that's my affiliate link).

The transcription for the video is being processed. I'll post it here as soon as it's ready.

The post Video: Crafting the Perfect Blogpost with WordPress + Elementor appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

This time we're talking about maintenance for your WordPress website. If you've had your site for a little while, you may have old themes installed. I know most sites I work on have at least a couple of unused themes installed.

Often these are leftover from past experiments or from the last time your website got a makeover.

Deleting themes that aren't being used is good for your site, it reduces the space your site uses and it removes old (maybe insecure) pieces of software.

You just don't need these lingering around on your site. If you're on Twitter, please hit that share button on the tweet below:

Go To Your Themes Dashboard

Go to your Appearance section on your main dashboard, then click on Themes. This will show your Themes control panel.

How many themes do you see there?

If you only have one, then Congratulations! you're done and don't have to do anything else.

If you only have two, you may be able to delete one theme.

But First, Let's Identify Your Current Theme

If you have three or more themes, then you can follow the rest of this tutorial.

Your current and active theme is the top left corner one, or you can see that it indicates it is the active theme. This is what my dashboard looks like:

Notice that I highlighted the active theme. It also says: "Active: News Pro." My theme name is "News Pro."

As a side note, I love News Pro from StudioPress. It's versatile and powerful. If you want to take a look at News Pro, you can see a demo of it on this link: News Pro Demo.

Since my theme is News Pro, I can delete all the other themes right? Nope.

No, sometimes a theme may have dependencies on another theme, if that's the case for you, you need to keep both themes. Only one will be active, but the other one needs to stay in place.

But do you check if you can delete a theme?

It is safe to delete a theme if

• You're not using it and,

• It's not necessary for another theme to function, we call this theme a "parent theme." You can read more about that here if you want the gory details.

To check to see if you have a parent and child theme situation going on, you need to click on the Theme Details button for your active theme. This button appears when you hover your cursor over your theme as shown in this screenshot.

If your theme depends on another theme, it will say this in the details.

Along with the name of the theme, the version and some additional details you'll see a notice like the one shown below where it indicates if there is a parent theme.

In my case, News Pro is a child theme of Genesis.

This means I can't delete News Pro OR Genesis. If I delete Genesis, my site will break even though I'm not using Genesis directly.

You Can Delete All Other Themes

Once you check to make sure there are no dependent themes, you can delete all but your active theme.

The benefits of this maintenance tip

Themes usually don't take a lot of space, usually between 3 to 50 mb. That's not a lot in today's "unlimited" hosting plans. But every little bit ads up. If you have eight, 10, 20 extra themes installed from past versions of your site, it makes a difference.

This also slows down your back-up procedure and could open up your site for security issues.

Just get rid of them.

The post Bite-Sized WordPress Maintenance Tips: Delete Old Themes. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

In this video, I give you the basics of using OIO Publisher to create ad zones and ads for your blog. This plugin is a staple on almost every blogger that monetizes their blog.

OIO Publisher allows you to create ads of any size, custom ad opportunities, text links, and sponsored posts. And you can sell the ad spaces and sponsored posts automatically.

As I mention in the video, you can create any type of banner ad, of any size for any section of your blog and it's really easy to do. I show it step by step in the tutorial.

The video may seem long but I address a few important topics related to your monetization strategy as well as some questions and feedback. From the previous video and I broke down the timecodes in case you want to skip around.

During both parts of the video, the driving part and the tutorial I cover two methods you can use monetize your blog, including a hands-on WordPress tutorial on how to do it.

One thing I didn't mention in the video is that you can use the code area to insert your Adsense ads or Media.net ads or another type of ad codes as well.

Links and references:

• OIO Publisher - Get it here.
• Adsanity - Not shown but mentioned, get it here. Will cover in a future blog post.

Monetizing your blog with content and OIO Publisher

There is a timecode table below the video if you want to skip to certain areas.

Timecodes:

0:00 to 2:00 - Recap and follow up to video about how much to start your affiliate business. (https://notagrouch.com/how-much-do-i-need-to-start-an-affiliate-marketing-business/ )

2:00 - Two methods to make money with your blog.

3:15 - First method.

4:20 - Sourcing new content.

6:15 - Doing reviews with a low budget.

8:15 - Getting products for free

8:24 - Disclosure with the FTC - I'm watching ya guys.

9:25 - The review policy for free stuff.

11:03 - Method 2

12:03 - OIO Publisher - Get it here.

14:15 - Tutorial start, install and basic OIO Publisher configuration.

17:35 - Adzones and banners.

20:11 - Adding media for an ad.

20:39 - Add a banner section to the sidebar (widget area)

23:00 - Getting an affiliate link and banner from Shareasale ( http://oglink.it/shareasale-youtube )

25:13 - Adding an ad using HTML (or Javascript, or PHP) code.

26:50 - Adding an ad using image and link.

29:55 - Creating your own advertisement ad.

31:00 - Inline ads for every post.

32:00 - Define your own ads.

The post Introduction to OIO Publisher and Two Methods to Monetize Your Blog appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Most websites include contact forms, and if you want to be accessible on your blog, you may want to add a contact form so your readers and visitors can reach out to you.

Visitors can, of course, reach out to you on social media, and you could potentially list your email so they can just send you an email. But using a form instead of a plain email address has some advantages.

I recommend never putting your email address in plain text on your website because it’s really easy for spam bots to collect it and start sending you junk.

Advantages to using a contact form

• You can keep your email address unlisted.
• Visitors that aren’t active in social media can inquire about your blog, business or services.
• Readers and visitors to your blog can reach out to you privately.
• You can connect the form to your newsletter or email list autoresponder and help grow your list.

Options for getting a contact form installed on your WordPress site.

There are two ways to getting a contact form working on your blog. One is to install and configure a contact form plugin. The other one is without a contact form plugin. I recommend using a plugin.

What if you want to get a WordPress contact form without a plugin?

You could create a form scratch by writing HTML and PHP code as shown here, but I don’t recommend that for beginners. Heck, I wouldn’t do that as an advanced programmer because it’s just too much work, it’s unnecessary and prone to errors, then you have to update it if something breaks. In my opinion, it’s better to use a plugin.

List of plugins you can use to create a contact form in WordPress:

• Jetpack
• Contact Form 7
• WP Forms
• Gravity Forms
• Ninja Forms

For this tutorial, we’ll be using WP Forms. I use WPForms for most of my contact forms, and I like how it integrates with other systems like my email list with Aweber.

Short video tutorial

Here is a short video that shows you the basic steps to creating your first form. I found that this video is good if you’re familiar with WordPress. Below the video, I’ve written an extensive tutorial explaining all the steps and options you’ll find along the way.

Let’s get started with the tutorial

First, install and activate the WP Forms plugin. I explained how to install and activate a plugin on this tutorial.

Because WP Forms is a paid plugin, you’ll need to insert your license key after you activate it.

Go to the new menu for WPForms (1), mouse over it, then click on Settings (2).

You’ll need to get your license key from the WPforms website and insert it, then click on the verify button.

You should see a confirmation window pop-up that will confirm that your plugin is fully activated and is eligible for automatic updates as shown below:

Create a new form

In the same menu where you found the Settings options, you’ll find the menu item to add a new form. Click on it to create your contact form.

Alternatively, you can click on the “All Forms” menu and then click on the Add New button from there.

WP Forms will present you with pre-made templates to get your form started. You’ll need to select the Simple Contact Form to continue.

The form template will have all the basics you need for a contact form; first name & last name, E-mail, comment or message as shown in the screenshot below:

Adding fields to your form

If you notice, there are additional fields you can add, those are the blue buttons on the left. There are three groups: standard fields, fancy fields, and payment fields.

For a contact form, the template provided is all you really need, but if you wanted to ask for additional information from your visitor, you just click on the blue button that you want and WPForms will add it to the end of your form.

For example, you may want to collect a phone number, you would click on the Phone field under the Fancy Fields (1) group, and this will add the phone field to the end of your form (2).

It doesn’t make sense to have the phone number at the end of the form, so you can just click and drag the field up, so it goes after E-mail.

At this point, you could click the Save button on the top right, and your form would be ready to be used. But we can add a little bit of polish.

Customizing the form

You’ll notice when you add the Phone field, that it doesn’t have the red asterisk next to it. That means it’s not a required field. If you want to make the field required to ensure your visitor fills it out, you can click on the field and edit the properties.

Another polishing touch is to rename the form. In this example, we change the name from Simple Contact Form to Main Contact Form. To rename your form, just click on the title.

This will open up the properties for the title, like we did for the phone field, allowing you to edit the title (1) and other parts of the form. In this screen, I’m also going to change the Submit button to say “Send” instead (2).

Now that the form has the fields we want and they look like we want them to, we need to take a look at the alerts.

Customizing alerts and notifications

By default when someone fills and submits the form from your website, WPForms will send a notification to the email address listed under the admin settings for WordPress. If you want to change this, you’ll need to enter the email address you want under the notifications section.

To access the notifications section, just click on the left-hand side from the screen where we customized the title of the form.

Updating Send to E-mail address

If you want the notification and form to be sent to a different address from the admin email address, you can change it here (1). Just replace the email address with the one you want; if you want to send it to multiple addresses, just add them by separating them with a comma.

The other part that I recommend you update is the Reply-to email address (2). This will make it easier to reply to the email address the visitor submitted.

When you get the email, you can just click on “reply, ” and their email address will be automatically filled in. If you don’t do this, sometimes depending on

Updating Reply-to email address

To update the Reply-to email address to match the email the visitor submitted on the form, you just need to click on the “Show Smart Tags” link then click on the Email listed.

This will add the code or “smart tag” for the email address. Generally, it will look like this “{field_id=”1″}”

Customizing the Message section content

The Message box contains the smart tag: “{all_fields}” which means you’ll receive all the information submitted by the visitor.

Sometimes you may want to add extra information, to see what’s available click on Show Smart Tags and scroll through the options.

I like to add date (1) and IP Address (2) at the bottom (3) just for my own records.

The last part to polishing up the form is to customize the confirmation the visitors see after they hit send.

Confirmation settings

After the visitor clicks on send, they will see the default message that reads:

“Thanks for contacting us! We will be in touch with you shortly.”

It will appear in a small green box as shown in the screenshot below:

To change the confirmation settings, click on the Confirmation menu item below the Notifications (1).

WPForms gives you three options, one is to show a message like described above (2), another one is to send the visitor to an existing page (2), and the third option is to send them to another URL (2).

We’ll cover the first two options: “Message” and “Show Page.” The third option is similar to “Show Page, ” but you just enter the full address of the page that you want the visitor to go to. This could be a web page outside of your own website.

Customizing the Message option

This is the simplest of the three. You just type in what you want to say in your message and save the form.

Customizing the Show Page option

When you select the Show Page option, you’ll be provided with all the existing pages on your website. You can then choose one of those.

This will send the visitor to that page after the form has been submitted successfully.

You can use this to send them to a Thank You page, or a page with additional information, like an FAQ, or a page that explains what they should expect after they have submitted the form.

To use the Show Page option, you must have the page you want to use already published on your site, once you select this option, you’ll be able to select the page from a drop-down menu.

How to use the form on your Blog

Once you have created your form, you’ll need to place it on a page or post so visitors can fill it out.

Inserting the form using a shortcode

WPForms uses shortcodes to embed forms on your pages or posts. You’ll find the shortcode in the edit window, next to the Save button.

Click on the button to reveal the code, it will look like the screenshot below:

You need to copy that entire shortcode and insert it into the page where you want the form to be displayed. This most likely will be your contact page.

Once you insert the code, save and publish your page, the page will show the contact form, and your visitors will be able to use it to send you messages, feedback or whatever type of message you want to collect from them.

Inserting the form with the visual editor

You may also use the “Add Form” button directly into a blog post or a page, available in the visual editing screen. When you use this, you can customize the title and description options for embedding the form.

When you click on “Add Form” the embed code will be inserted into your page or blog post.

Conclusion

If you have a WordPress blog, or a website, it is likely that you need to have a contact form so your visitors can contact you, send you feedback or provide some type of information.

WPForms is extremely reliable and easy to use for beginners and advanced bloggers. This blog post explains how to create a contact form for your WordPress website. I explain most of the options available and also how to use the form.

If you have questions or feedback about this tutorial, please leave a comment and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

The post How to Add a Contact Form to Your WordPress Website appeared first on How To Blog Tutorials.

The post How to Add a Contact Form to Your WordPress Website appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

How do I find images that I can use on my blogposts?

Synopsis: Sometimes you have a great blogpost but you don't have an image that you created yourself either by using photoshop or by taking a photo yourself. It's easy to just go on Google and look for an image then use it for your blog, but I do not recommend this as a matter of practice because you can run into legal issues.

Just because you find it on Google, doesn't mean you can use it for your blog. You need permission to use photos and images that aren't yours. Or you need to find images and photos that have been licensed for public use under a Creative Commons license or similar.

Short Answer: Use a plugin that facilitates the image search and inserts the photo for you while taking care of the licensing. The plugin is: ImageInject, and you can find it in the WordPress.org repository.

Long answer: You can search the web for images that are free to use, by using the Image search in Google, then using the more tools section to find images that may be licensed under creative commons or other license that allows you to use them for blogpost and business if necessary. This can be tedious and time consuming.

I recommend you use the ImageInject plugin that is free in the WordPress plugin repository.

After you install it and activate it, you will find a new search box at the bottom of your edit window in your blogposts in WordPress. Use this to search for keywords related to the photo you need or want to use.

After you search (1), you'll find a list of images from a couple different sources (2), you can then insert the image directly into your blogpost by using the correct size or set them as a featured image (3).

The plugin also imports the image to your own media library so you can use it as the featured image for that blogpost. The plugin takes care of adding the necessary attribution to the post as well so you should be compliant. The images are free to use as is, or they use the Creative Commons licensing model. You can learn more about that here.

Once you have added an image to the blogpost, you can also set the image as the featured image to that blogpost. Just use the Featured Image section on your edit screen like you would for any other image from your media library.

Of course, the best way to add images to your blogpost is to take your own photos or create your own graphics and use those, but this method I've shown here is the next best thing. Let me know if you have a question I can help you answer, or better yet, join us at the next Blogs & Coffee meetup!

The post How do I Find Images to Use on my Blogposts? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I use Gravity Forms for tons of different things on all the websites I create. It can work as a feedback form like I describe in this video. You can also use it to create a quiz, or a survey. You can even use it to sell products or services right on your WordPress website.

Some of the other features include: multiple page forms, custom fields, you can even schedule a form to be available only during certain times or for a limited number of entries.

In this video I explain how to create a form to gather feedback. I use a form just like this to get feedback from students after they attend a class. This video is part of a tutorial series so I thought I'd share it with you. Feel free to leave any feedback in the comments!

If and when you get Gravity Forms you use this link, you'll get the best deal possible and help me create even more tutorials in the future.

The post Feedback form for WordPress with Gravity Forms – Tutorial appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

The post WordPress Instatutorial Dashboard Settings appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

To create a blogpost follow these steps

1. Login to your website
2. On the left hand side, click on Posts, then click on Add New, you can then fill in the title of your post and then write the blogpost in the big text section below the title. You will have controls similar to other programs in your computer like Microsoft Word so you can format the text like you want it.
3. On the right hand side you have the Publish section that allows you to publish your new post so people can see it, save it as a draft so you can edit it later or schedule it to be automatically posted at a specified date.
4. You can also assign tags and categories.

To create a page you follow similar steps as the ones above, but instead of clicking on Posts, you'll click on Pages. Another difference between blogposts and pages is that generally pages don't have categories associated with them.

Once you create and publish a blogpost, it should show up on your blog page. After you create a page, you can then add it to one of your navigation menus, add it to a widget or just link to it from anywhere on your site.

The post How to create a blogpost or page in WordPress appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

When I build people's websites I often hear what the previous "wordpress person" told them... Everyone tells you something like this: It's WordPress, so it's easy to use. Anyone can do it!. That followed by the wink and a smile. The truth is that most people (maybe you too), don't like dealing with this stuff. It may be easy for them to do it because they do it all day long for many websites. But for you as a business owner, you don't need that added pressure.

So here's another simple video for your new free WordPress site. This is how to update plugins. It's simple but useful.

The post Updating Plugins on your Free Website appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Most hosts offer built in backups but these come with restrictions and are only kept for a limited amount of time. Ideally, I like to keep nightly back ups for about 9 days, weekly backups for about 5 weeks and monthly backups for 13 months. Notice I always have a little bit more than that cycle of time ranges. That just makes me comfortable but you can choose to keep as many or as few archives of your site as you wish.

[pullquote position="left"]You never need a backup until something happens. Don't wait until then to set it up! #wordpress[/pullquote]

There are several backup plugins that you can use in addition to the one offered by your hosting company. If you are relying on your hosts backup system only, make sure you review the instructions from the host and make sure the backup ssystem is active. Some hosts don't have backups turned on by default and require you to turn them on if you want to use them.

A backup is very important if you care at all about your website. The reason I think you should do it immediately after you start your website, is so that you don't loose anything! Sometimes people start blogging, and they make a couple changes here and there. Then they get excited and one thing leads to another and next thing you know, the blog is broken. This recently happened to a friend of mine and it cost her about $200.00 to fix.

There are two backup systems I use when backing up WordPress. There is a third one that is also highly recommended and I'll tell you about all three in brief. By the way, if you get the free wordpress website service I offer then this is something else you don't have to worry about. I do it all for you.

Best Backup Plugins for WordPress

Backup Buddy

My plugin of choice for backups. It is a premium plugin so you'll have to buy it but I think it is worth every penny. It allows you to create as many backup schedules as you need. It gives you granular control of which directories and files to back-up or exclude. Additionally it comes with a malware scanner to keep your site safe from bad files.

Backup WordPress

My second choice for backups for its flexibility of timeframes and consistency. It is missing some features and I may replace this choice in the future when I have some time to re-evaluate more backup plugins. The main feature it lacks is moving the backup to a safe "offline" location. This is the backup that is setup for your free WordPress website, but if you buy the license for Backup Buddy, I will set that up for you instead.

VaultPress

Some people swear by VaultPress. Vaultpress is a service offered by the WordPress guys themselves. It is a bit pricey but it offers peace of mind and continuous backup solution. The backups are done offsite automatically and they offer real time backup for the continuous solution I mentioned. That's about $15/month and it's the only reason I would use them. It would be good to have this service if your blog is huge or gets a lot of updates constantly, like comments or if you have multiple authors.

The post Setup a Backup system for WordPress Tip #02 appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Permalinks is a term that refers to the URL of a particular post or page on your WordPress site. By default, WordPress uses a code ID in the url for your posts. for example something like this:

http://example.com/?p=231

That is nice and short, and it is unique, but it isn't friendly or memorable. A good alternative would be if the URL looked like this:

http://example.com/news-post-article/

The second example is much easier to read. There may also be SEO benefits when you se words in the URL. This last section of the URL is called "the slug". That term may come in handy later on as you learn more about WordPress.

It is recommended that you setup your permalinks with something that is more relevant to your website. A popular choice as of lately is to use the postname as part of the URL.

To set this on your new WordPress website, visit your Dashboard, then go to Settings and to the Permalinks Section.

There are other options you could choose from, but this example uses the postname as the selected option. See the screenshot for details.

You'll need to save your settings after you change them. Pay close attention for a warning that may pop-up after you click on save changes. Sometimes, some hosts will not allow you to save your permalinks automatically. This warning will advise you of that problem in case it comes up.

You could also look through the quick-start guide for other beginner steps when setting up your WordPress site. That's a quick guide that I've created for the Free WordPress website system I offer.

The post Setup Permalinks Early #WPTips 01 appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

If you can't find a theme that you want to use from the ones I installed for you, you can find additional ones and install them and I also teach you how to do that. There is a very cool bonus in the video where I explain the basics of a responsive theme.

Back to the Free WordPress Setup Guide

The post How to Activate a Theme for your Free WordPress Website appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

If you have trouble watching it on my website, here is the direct link on youtube.

Back to the Free WordPress Setup Guide

The post How to Log-in to your New Free WordPress Website appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

The post How to Update Plugins and Themes on WordPress appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

If you don't have a free wordpress website from me, a lot of this video will still help you if you're new to WordPress for some of the information will be exclusive to those that got the free site, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Back to the Free WordPress Setup Guide.

The post Quickstart Guide for your Free WordPress Website appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

The post How to Curate Content with WordPress appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

This video shows you the easiest way to add youtube (and other networks too) videos to your WordPress site. I picked up the tip at the Orange County WordPress Meetup group where Jeff Turner showcased the plugin. I also cover a couple other tools I used during the video. Hope you enjoy it.

If you want something else in particular, just leave me a note in the comments. I'd also appreciate it if you could thumbs up the video, and share this post and the video to your favorite networks.

The post Posting Youtube Videos to WordPress appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Silly me... this for one, isn't trivial, and when I came to my senses this morning I decided to just look for a plugin that would do what I wanted. I expected some plugins to be available but I didn't think that they would be very simple to use or even work well with other plugins. Lucky for me, I found the right plugin on my first search with "columns wordpress plugin" in google. The plugin is called: WP Post Columns. It basically does everything I thought about last night and it seems to do it well. Take a look at this example of a poem I really like, I've split it into two columns with this plugin.

The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost.
[column width padding="2%"]
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
[/column]
[column width padding="2%"]
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.
[/column]
[end_columns]

The plugin is not in the official WordPress repository but its very easy to install, just the standard stuff, download, unzip, upload, activate. Or you can try using the uploader function in your WordPress plugin administration console.

The plugin works right out of the box and has no configuration options right now, the author says its because the plugin is beta but I don't know if it needs configuration options. I think if its smart enough. The plugin can be found here.

The post Columns on WordPress posts appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.