PhpBay Site Build – Installation

As I talked about in the previous post, we will be installing a fresh phpBay site on a new domain.

The niche I am building this site around is hair and skin care. As a licensed cosmetologist, this is a topic that I have a lot of knowledge in and am passionate about. Without even doing the research, I already know this is a hot niche as I ran a successful Blogger blog for years on the topic and received thousands of daily hits. I have always been curious how it would do with WordPress and now is the perfect time to find out.

The domain I will be building this site on is: http://gorgeousforless.com

Catchy title, eh?

This is a domain I've had sitting around for quite a while and have never developed. It has never had a site or parking on it since I have owned it so I'm starting at the most basic level with it - just as many of you will be with your own sites.

I set the nameservers and added the domain to my account on 06/19/08. So the first thing that has to be done is to install WordPress. This is easily accomplished with the click of a button in cPanel of your hosting account. Simply login to your domain, navigate to the Fantastico tab, click WordPress and follow the instructions for getting it installed on your domain. It is very easy to do, but if any of you have questions or problems, just ask and I'll be glad to help.

Now that WordPress is installed, take a look at your site. This is what you should see:

I had already removed the default post, comment and links that were in the sidebar.

Next you need to login to your admin panel and change the WordPress settings to your liking. When you first login, this is what your Dashboard will look like:

For those of you who are new to WordPress, we'll talk more about your WordPress Settings in a later post. However, one item that you will need to change before you begin making any posts is your Permalinks. These need to be set from Day 1.

To change them to an SEO friendly structure, just click on Settings, then Permalinks and scroll down to Custom. Change the structure to what you see in the screenshot below:

Now we are ready to go search for a theme for the site. The best part about customizing a WordPress installation is the ability to choose from thousands of Free themes. I usually head on over to my page located here: http://www.melissaeaton.com/free-seo-wordpress-themes/ to find something appropriate and well-balanced for the niche.

Now I realize this is a beauty niche and it might possibly perform better with a flashy theme, but I like to keep things simple. I have found through my years of experience that the more simple a site is, the better it performs. If you want proof, look at Google. Besides, I'm not real crazy about having a ton of flash on my pages. Not only will the site load faster, but it will showcase the content.

The theme I have chosen is the Green Tech theme below:

I like this theme because it is clean looking, clean coded and has many features to it. It also is very easy to edit.

Now would be a good time for you to go ahead and finish setting up your WordPress Installation and install your favorite plugins. Tomorrow, we will upload phpBay Pro, tune our settings and get our first post online. Stay tuned!