Have you ever wanted a blog of your very own? Join me this week for the fourth lesson on setting up your own WordPress.com blog – it’ll be a piece of cake!
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The Dreaded Dashboard
Ok, pull up your big girl panties, and buckle your seat belts. We’re going in, and we’re going in deep. Let’s find out what’s with some of those buttons on the Dashboard.
We’ll take these one by one. One thing to note – this is for WordPress.com blogs only – the one we’ve signed up for in the first lesson. If you have your own WordPress.org blog under your own domain name, your dashboard won’t look like this!
- Dashboard –
- Right Now – Displays how many posts, pages, categories etc you have on your site right now. Appropriately named, yes?
- Recent Comments – If someone, say Kevin Costner for instance, has posted on your blog recently, it will be listed here.
- Incoming Links – You wrote an article so wildly popular, that other bloggers have linked to your eternal wisdom. Those links will be listed here.
- Your Stuff – When you last posted, what you posted, and links to each one. Think of it as the FBI of your blog stuff. It just knows….
- What’s Hot – Stuff you might find interesting in the world of blogs. Hot blog posts, top blogs from around the world, who’s up and coming. If Your Stuff is the FBI, this is Interpol.
- QuickPress – Got something short and sweet to say? Post it, publish it. No fuss, no muss.
- Recent Drafts – Your recent drafts. These titles are uncanny aren’t they?
- Stats – Views per day. Just a quick view of your stats. For further information click on View all in that same box, or on your dashboard to Blog Stats. It will go to the same page.
- Blog Stats –
- This takes a second to load – patience my little chickadee.
- The graph displays the dates along the bottom, and the rise and fall of visitors to your pages. Mouseover the date and it will tell you how many visitors you had that day. Even if no one commented!
- Referrers – Where have your visitors come from? Google? Blog-o-riffic? Outer Space? (Okay, technically it might not register outer space, but that would be really cool.)
- Search Engine Terms – What were those people searching for when they found you? Sometimes it’s quite fascinating.
- Blog Stats – Table Summary – This is for those of you who love stats and tables and summaries. (Hi Kelsey!!) The rest of the blog stats not in the table neatly summarizes the table for you.
- Top Posts and Pages – What pages and posts are getting the biggest hits?
- Clicks – People click on things when they visit a blog. This is going to tell you what people clicked on while visiting your blog.
- Blog Surfer –
- This allows you to find friends, family and other like-minded (or not!) bloggers on WordPress.com. Simply add in their URL, and WP will bring their blogposts to your blog to read (see Readomattic below) Sweet? You betcha.
- My Comments –
- If you’ve been out traveling other blogs and commenting on them (which is the best way to get traffic to your site!) this will show your comment and all following comments on that blog post.
- Readomattic –
- This is where you read the blog posts you’ve subscribed to.
- Tag Surfer –
- Add and remove tags of subjects you’re interested in. Remember, tags are used to identify what is in your post to the reader. So, if you’re fascinated by aardvarks, add that in as a tag you’d like to search on. Your screen will be filled with posts from around the world, all using aardvark as a tag. Did you really mean artichokes and not aardvarks? Easy mistake to make. Simply “X” out of aardvarks and it’s gone.
- My Blogs –
- Suppose you have two different blogs – one for aardvarks and one for artichokes. This page will list them both or let you register that third blog, Anemones.
- Subscriptions –
- Sign up on other blogs and receive emails when they’ve posted new content.
- Akismet Stats –
- Akismet is pretty darn cool. When someone sends you a spam (and trust me, you’ll be AMAZED at who is spamming you!) Akismet catches it. And tells you about it. And lets you read it. Don’t spammers have a life? Yeesh.
- Upgrades –
- Do you need more space? Want to post all of your videos of your daughter’s wedding in Jamaica? Here’s where you can buy more of everything you might ever need.
Finally, the end of this little section of the dashboard. Tired yet? Prop open your eyes with toothpicks and then I’ll show you more fun blog maneuvers. Promise.
Fun Stuff –
As your reward for following through with the dashboard parts– hey! Wake up! – Here’s some fun blogging stuff to play with.
Let’s talk about Widgets. Whatzits? Widgets. Fun little items you can add to the sidebar of your blog. What’s a sidebar? Go to the front page of your blog, and look to the side. Depending on the design you’ve chosen, it could be on the left or the right, and generally is topped with a search bar. Your main content containing the blog will be in the middle, your sidebar on one side or the other.
This is my current sidebar. Borrrr-ing.
Let’s pimp your sidebar shall we?
- On your dashboard go to Appearance>Widgets
- The middle column will show you your available widgets. You have all of these to choose from. Just like shopping in Macy’s.
- With your mouse pointer, grab and drag your widget of choice to Sidebar 1 on the right. A dotted outline will show up, and just drop it there. You can wiggle it around later.
- I chose Authors, as I’m going to have other Authors visiting on my site to talk about website design.
- Plop! Let it go.
- Click the light gray arrow on the right side of your Authors Box and Wallah! Look at all the fun stuff you get to fill in!
The Title which will show on your side bar. I named mine My Peeps.- Number of posts to show – 3. Otherwise it gets a bit crowded.
- Avatar Size – 48×48
- Click Save. Wait for the swirly thing to finish
- Click close.
- Zoom back to your front page and see how it looks.
Great start!
By adding in more widgets you can customize your blog to be more about YOU and your likes. Your widgets can be moved up and down on the sidebar by using the same drag and drop method or removed entirely by dragging the widget back to the middle column.
Here’s my NEW and IMPROVED sidebar.
Oh baby. I’m goooood. =)
Experiment with your widgets. There’s too much to go over in just this one post, so grab a widget, drag it, drop it, play with it. Then you can decide if it’s the best thing since spray butter – or if you want to delete it.
We’ll move it along to Lesson Number Five next week – stay tuned!
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Carrie is a faculty member on Romance University. In her spare time she manages a restaurant, designs jewelry and websites, and is writing three manuscripts concurrently. She lives on a farm in Iowa with seven cats, a husband from England and, as was discovered in the mudroom last week, a woodchuck. You can visit her blog anytime at Smart Ass Romance.
Kelsey's serving up bite-sized morsels for your noggin on her new 
Carrie, this is a great series of posts. Fabulous job!
Posted by Adrienne Giordano | August 3, 2010, 8:36 amThanks Adrienne!
Only two more lessons to go, and we should be viewing a plethora of blogs!
=)
carrie
Posted by Carrie Spencer | August 3, 2010, 9:52 amHi Carrie,
I’m learning so much from this series! Thank you!!!
I did have one question about today’s lecture. I’m a little confused about the readomattic part. Does it allow you to subscribe to blogs that are not xxxxx.wordpress.com? If so, how? Could I subscribe to a blog that is made through wordpress and also mapped to another link? (I think I’m using the terminology correctly–I mean something like http://www.joeblow.com when it’s also http://www.joeblow.wordpress.com) If so, how would I know what the wordpress name is?
Oh, and is it too early today to start thinking about cheesecake?
Sally
Posted by Sally Bayless | August 3, 2010, 9:03 amSally dear, it’s NEVER too early to think about cheesecake! =)
Readomattic is ONLY for WP.com blogs. It’s still in testing mode, so expect some improvements in the future! The site HAS to have the WP format xxxx.wordpress.com. You can search on Google or Technorati etc to find a certain type of blog, or a bloggers name fairly easily, then type in their WP.com URL into your Readomaattic.
Not all the bugs are worked out yet, it requires a little extra effort on your part to find the blog you want, but knowing WP, they’ll get the bugs worked out in NO time!
Hope your blog is progressing well Sally!
carrie
Posted by Carrie Spencer | August 3, 2010, 10:28 pmThanks, Carrie! You’re amazing!!!!!
Posted by Sally Bayless | August 4, 2010, 1:08 pmHi Carrie!
Lots of great info here. I have a Blogspot blog so this doesn’t apply to me. But wanted to let you know I stopped by.
Posted by Wendy Marcus | August 3, 2010, 1:13 pmGreat seeing you Wendy! Thanks for popping in!
=)
carrie
Posted by Carrie Spencer | August 3, 2010, 2:08 pmCarrie…
You rock! These posts are absolutely fab-U-lous!
Still slack jawed in amazement…
Posted by Jennifer Tanner | August 3, 2010, 1:44 pmLol…thanks Jennifer…..looking forward to seeing YOUR blog too! =)
carrie
Posted by Carrie Spencer | August 3, 2010, 2:09 pmHey, Carrie -
I’m in love with widgets. Are there convenient ways for WP users to find the best widgets suited to a particular purpose? Just scrolling through them in WP seems overwhelming.
Thanks for another great post!
Kels
Posted by Kelsey Browning | August 3, 2010, 2:08 pmHey Kelsey..
On WordPress.com, you’re a bit more limited on widgets than you are on WordPress.org. There, someone with widget-a-holicism can run into REAL BIG trouble! =) And then I highly recommend you go to wordpress.org and do a search – they offer user reviews so you can see how well your plugin/widget works for other people. It helps!
On WP.com, your widgets are limited by the template you choose. Play with the widgets, put some on, take some off..it’s as simple as drag and drop. Just don’t over do, or the sidebar police will come take you away.
=)
carrie
Posted by Carrie Spencer | August 3, 2010, 2:48 pmLOL – I should’ve been arrested already then!
K-
PS – Good thing we don’t have an office or you’d now have to sit on the bench outside
.
Posted by Kelsey Browning | August 3, 2010, 6:21 pmCarrie,
Once again great job with all the details in here. Your simply AWESOME!
Holly
Posted by Holly | August 3, 2010, 3:57 pmThanks Holly!
My head’s getting too big to fit through the RU office door…..lol…
carrie
Posted by Carrie Spencer | August 3, 2010, 4:13 pmCarrie,
Love this series! I need to check out the widget for my personal blog. Sounds like there are some great gizmos out there.
Tracey
Posted by TraceyDevlyn | August 3, 2010, 9:46 pmThanks Tracey…just remember, you can develop widget-itis. There’s no known cure!
=)
carrie
Posted by Carrie Spencer | August 3, 2010, 10:13 pmCarrie: I love this series of lessons. I have already started building my blog on WordPress – thanks!
Posted by Robin Covington | August 5, 2010, 3:19 pmThat’s excellent Robin! Looking forward to seeing it!
=)
carrie
Posted by Carrie Spencer | August 7, 2010, 8:10 amHi Carrie,
Last time I asked about building and deleting blogs. You confirmed that I could and said:
” This is a one shot deal!”
Not sure exactly what you meant. Does that mean if I discard my blog will not be able to set up a new one? Or I only get to discard and set up a new one once?
Weird question, I know. Just like to know the limitations… not planning to make a career of it.
Posted by Cia | August 5, 2010, 3:34 pmCia…deleting your blog …deletes your blog! It will be no more. Yes, you can go right back in and build another one! BUT you can never use that blog name again. So if you’re deleting ciasblog.wordpress.com – that IS a one shot deal – neither you nor anyone else can ever use that name again. You can build any number of blogs, but that name is no longer available. Ever.
Hope that answers your question!
carrie
Posted by Carrie Spencer | August 7, 2010, 8:16 amCarrie,
Thank you. The clarification, particularly about the inability to reuse the name of the blog, cleared up the ambiguity.
Posted by Cia | August 8, 2010, 12:17 pmGlad to be of service! =)
carrie
Posted by Carrie Spencer | August 9, 2010, 1:56 pmHi Carrie,
I’ve sworn a lot at Akismet because it tells me it’s swallowed loads of spam but I can’t see the comments it’s swallowed to make sure none are genuine. How do I view them?
As an aside, I’ve also got a Blogger blog and it doesn’t appear to do much spam-fighting, yet I also don’t seem to get spammed. So is WP just susceptible to spammers, or is Blogger also swallowing emails and not telling me?
Rae
Posted by Rae Summers | August 6, 2010, 11:12 amRae..
Akismet is used on WP.com, but due to WP.com’s limitations you don’t get to play with the settings!
Akismet will catch your spam and hold it for 15 days. You can find it under your dashboard>comments>spam. If you go through your spam every few days, you’ll catch anything before Akismet deletes it.
Comparing Blogger and WP as far as spam goes first depends on the content of the blog itself. WP has more posters, so it will get hit harder by spammers. Also, it depends on your personal count of how many blog posts you make and what type of blog you have – some are more popular for spammers to hit. And finally Blogger has a CAPTCHA service that does help block some (not all!) spammers.
Hope that helps!
carrie
Posted by Carrie Spencer | August 7, 2010, 10:26 amThanks for answering my questions, Carrie – and for answering in words I understand. You might just be my favourite techie!
Posted by Rae Summers | August 8, 2010, 4:16 pmaw…..that’s a sweet thing to say. =)
carrie
Posted by Carrie Spencer | August 9, 2010, 1:54 pm