Learn how to improve the look of the site
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I would like to improve the look of my site. add email capture. Make it look more professional.
I have signed up to wordpress 101 blogging but wonder what to do next.
what would you suggest to do next?The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Email capture?
There is no such mass mailing feature here at WordPress.com. Your followers can subscribe to receive your posts by email and they can control the frequency of receipt. You cannot subscribe for them or control the frequency of receipt of your posts by them
IMPORTANT Note: When followers or commenters provide an email address for a specific purpose you cannot use it for any other purpose. In fact doing that in countries like Canada it is against the law.
You can create a Subscribe page and clearly state on it that you intend to harvest email addresses if that’s what you want to do. http://en.support.wordpress.com/pages/
You can add and customize a contact form with multiple fields, change the email address where you’ll be notified, and mark feedbacks as spam from your dashboard on that page. http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact-form/
You can create a sign up page on MailChimp directly and simply link to it from your WordPress.com site. Here’s their instructions http://kb.mailchimp.com/article/how-to-add-a-mailchimp-signup-form-to-your-wordpress-blog
Additional information:
You can set up email subscriptions here > Appearance > Widgets > Follow Blog Widgets by using this guide > http://en.support.wordpress.com/widgets/follow-blog-widget/If you would like a follow button to appear on the bottom right hand corner of your site for those who do not have WordPress.com accounts go to > Settings > Reading and scroll down to Follower Settings:
These settings change emails sent from your blog to followers.
Logged out users __ Show follow button to logged out users.Checking this will present a follow button to logged out users in the bottom corner of their screen.
See also http://en.support.wordpress.com/follow-button/
We have a subscription shortcode which you can make use of. The help page on it is right here: http://en.support.wordpress.com/blog-subscription-shortcode/ You can also include the subscription shortcode at the end of every post you publish.
Find Friends Who Use WordPress > http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/find-friends/
I have signed up to wordpress 101 blogging but wonder what to do next. what would you suggest to do next?
Complete all your Blogging 101 assignments and read this sticky post at to top of the forums: Getting started in the forums
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Here are some basics to attend to below.
To verify blog ownership of a WordPress.com hosted blog with the major search engines you must use this process > http://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools/
Note: Even if you do not verify the blog the content will be indexed by search engines so don’t feel panicky about this please.WordPress.com automatically supplies sitemaps for our blogs to search engines – we do nothing. http://en.support.wordpress.com/sitemaps/#xml-sitemaps-for-search-engines
It can take weeks for search engines to index content in a new blog and/or to re-index content under a new URL. What attracts search engines is unique content in posts (not pages) that cannot be found anywhere else on the internet. Start now publishing original content posts frequently two or even three times weekly. For more information read > http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2010/01/21/omg-i-cant-find-my-blog-on-google/
It takes time and effort to build a collection of unique content, to promote it, and to attract followers. It takes weeks for search engines to index content in a new blog and/or to re-index content under a new URL.
See these for Staff tips on increasing traffic:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/getting-more-views-and-traffic/
http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2011/07/28/how-to-get-more-traffic/
http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/traffic-dos-and-donts-a-checklist/
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/postaday/ebook-grow-traffic/If you want to increase traffic then don’t listen to anyone who professes there are passive ways of doing that. Increasing traffic to a blog is hard work. If you want your blog to rank well in search engine results then that begins with creating and publishing original content posts (not pages) ie. unique content that cannot be found anywhere else on the internet.
See How to Identify Your Blog’s Target Audience http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2013/09/01/how-to-identify-your-blogs-target-audience/
These 5 videos introduce how Google discovers, crawls, indexes your site’s pages, and how Google displays them in search results. It also touches lightly upon challenges webmasters and search engines face, such as duplicate content http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2010/03/22/5google-webmasters-video-tutorials/
If you are using a WordPress.com theme good SEO is a given. However, going beyond the theme what the blogger has done within that structure is worth evaluating. Whether you write informative, persuasive or controversial content learning how search engines work, and how to apply basic SEO to you content will benefit your blog as it will increase traffic from targeted readers. http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2011/10/21/two-seo-videos-for-bloggers/
6 Ways to Make Google Your Blog’s Best Friend > http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2012/10/08/6-ways-to-make-google-your-blogs-best-friend/
re: appearance
Where new bloggers go wrong is focusing far to much on appearance and widgets that can be distracting. Cluttered sites draw attention away from your content. Know that as in all elegant things when it comes to site appearance less is more. What’s most important is providing easy to locate and intuitive navigational aids for your visitors. See here for 12 Website Navigation Guidelines
http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2013/01/22/12-website-navigation-guidelines/Lastly, if you have specific questions about your theme appearance and functionality consult your detailed theme description page at https://theme.wordpress.com/themes/intergalactic/ and the live demo site at http://intergalacticdemo.wordpress.com/
If you do not find answers there then create a thread in the Themes Forum https://en.forums.wordpress.com/forum/themes
Happy blogging!
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