If you’re using WordPress.org to power your web site, membership site or blog then adding a form is quite easy – whether that’s a simple ‘Contact Us’ form or a comprehensive survey or questionnaire.

There are many plug-ins available to simplify this but my favourites are the Grunion Contact Form and Contact Form 7 plug-ins.

For either of these plug-ins, install and activate them as follows:

• Log in to your WordPress Admin Dashboard
• Go to Plug-ins > Add New
• In the ‘Search’ field, enter EITHER Grunion Contact Form OR Contact Form 7
• When the results show, click on ‘Install’ next to the name of the plug-in you want to install
• WordPress will go through the process of uploading and installing the plug-in
• When prompted, click the ‘Activate’ link
• Now you’re ready to go to the plug-in’s ‘Setting’ page to configure the form to your requirements

By default, data submitted by these forms will be forwarded to the email address that is in your blog settings. However you can nominate a different address(es) in the plug-in’s settings.

How To Create A Form On Your WordPress Site is a post from: Donna-Marie Coggins

A few people have asked me recently how to add an image to their sidebar in WordPress.

For example, in the sidebar of this site there’s a square banner ad for a free audio of mine. How did I add that to the sidebar?

Basically, you follow these steps:

1. From your WP Dashboard, click on the Widgets link (on the left, under Appearance)
2. Add a Text widget by dragging the Text button from the left over to the right of your screen, then position it where you’d like it displayed
3. Click on Edit (bottom right of that Text widget)
4. The Text widget expands and you can paste your *HTML code for your image in there then click on Done on the bottom left of that Text box
5. Remember to click on the Save button, at the bottom of the sidebar widgets

*Now I know I probably lost a few people when I said to paste the HTML code for your image, right? You probably don’t have HTML code for it, right? You’ve just got a .jpg image sitting on your hard drive.

You can do this by various techniques, but the easiest way, especially if you’re not that clued up on your FTP processes, is to do this:

• BEFORE you start to add the image to your sidebar, create a new post and add your image to it, as though you were simply including your image in a blog post.
• Then click on the HTML tab and copy all the text (Control + A will copy all) You can paste this into a text document for now if you like, just so you’ve got a copy of it.
• Then you can delete this post – you don’t need it any more.
• Now, follow the steps above and when it says to paste your HTML code, you’ve got yours all ready to go 

Simple!

The Simple Way To Add An Image To Your WordPress Sidebar is a post from: Donna-Marie Coggins

Earlier this year I began using the Thesis theme for WordPress. Until then I’d been using free WP themes and they were good.

However I couldn’t find a theme that had the exact layout I was after and so ended up installing a fairly generic one… and then pulling it to pieces and customising it. To do this I had to learn CSS coding and spent hours upon hours upon hours getting it ‘okay’. In the end, there were still a few bits and pieces that just wouldn’t come together like I’d hoped.

Then I saw the light… I discovered Thesis.

The Thesis theme is not free but it’s quite affordable. The thing I love the most is just how quick and easy it is to customise, without having to know anything about CSS.

You simply choose – in most cases via a simple drop-down menu – whether you want a 1, 2 or 3 column site, what order you want those columns in, what font you want for the headline and main content text and so on. I also like that it has SEO friendly fields built in automatically so there’s no need to install and SEO plug-in.

Granted it still has its limitations, but in all honesty this is by far the best theme I’ve found and I absolutely love it. I’m sure I could overcome those limitations by editing the CSS stylesheet if I really wanted to, but personally, I don’t feel it’s necessary.

The Thesis theme is produced by DIY Themes – you can visit DIY Themes to watch a quick video demonstrating just how simple it is to customise your site.

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Disclosure: Compensated Affiliate

WordPress Theme Review – Thesis is a post from: Donna-Marie Coggins

Here’s a great video tutorial by the wonderful ladies at Blogging Time Savers. They  have a series of video tutorials available, clearly showing you how to install, configure, customise and maintain your WordPress site.

In this video Katie and Anne give easy-to-follow instructions on how to ping your articles. Don’t know what ‘pinging’ is? Well, you will once you’ve watched this 

How To Ping Your Articles is a post from: Donna-Marie Coggins

I have to admit it… I love WordPress.

In my work I’m often helping people set up and maintain their blog and I have no qualms about recommending WordPress.

Many people reading this would already know that the totally free option is WordPress.com, where your blog is hosted on WordPress’ server. This is a great option but, particularly if you’re running a business, the self-hosted software at WordPress.org is much better. By hosting the software on your own domain you have more control over your site, plus you can use it to promote products and services or affiliate products if you want to.

When using the self-hosted version of WordPress you still have a wide selection of templates – or themes – available to you. Many of these are free or you can spend a bit of money getting something more suitable for your specific needs. Or you can get someone to design a theme just for you. To find these, simply search for “Free WordPress templates” or “WordPress templates”.

My favourite is the Thesis Theme (the one I’m using on this site). This isn’t free, but it’s very reasonably priced. The greatest thing about the Thesis Theme is that it is just so easy to customise.

Most themes require some knowledge of CSS coding to be able to edit the style sheet to change the layout of the site, font styles, colours and sizes or the header or footer. But in Thesis, it comes complete with simple drop-down menus so you can choose how many columns you want your blog to have, the column positions, the size and style of your fonts, the widgets you want included in the sidebar and so on. To get an idea of how easy this theme is to customise, have a look at this Thesis Theme video by the theme’s creator, Chris Pearson.

Once you’ve downloaded the software from WordPress.org and chosen your theme, it’s time to set up and configure your site. This is not difficult, but it can be a challenge if you don’t know where to start.

A great resource is this series of tutorials at Blogging Time Savers. You can make use of the entire course or simply buy individual modules for the specific thing you’re looking to do for as little as a few dollars. I strongly recommend following some simple, clear yet detailed instructions on how to install and configure your site.

If you’re using the Thesis Theme, once your site is basically set up you can refer to Thesis’ tutorials on how to customise your site (the link to these will be given to you when you purchase the software).

Then you can also add some extra plug-ins to allow you to do many other things, such as Google Analytics to monitor your blog’s traffic, a site map to improve your Google ranking, an OpenHook plug-in to help you further customise your Thesis Theme, a spam filter, blog stats counter and so much more. My favourite plug-ins are:

• Thesis OpenHook – allows extra Thesis Theme customisation
• Akismet – spam filter
• Google XML Sitemaps
• Google Analytics
• WordPress.com Stats
• Page Mash – handy for selecting some pages that you might want to keep hidden
• PodPress
• RSS Footer
• Share This – social bookmarking links
• WP Video
• All-In-One SEO – although this isn’t required if you’re using the Thesis Theme

To find these plug-ins simply click on the plug-ins link you’ll find in your WordPress site’s admin panel.

Another great thing about WordPress is that there’s no shortage of help available if ever you get stuck.

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Disclosure: Compensated Affiliate

How To Make The Most Of Your WordPress Site is a post from: Donna-Marie Coggins