Where do you store your themes, plugins and files on your web host and how should you store your files on your own client computer? When you install your wordpress blog using either fantastico or by doing it yourself, the file and folder structure is very specific, you can’t really change it, nor do you want to. There is no room for changing the built in structure, leaving you simply having to understand it so you can FTP your files to the proper places.

It’s actually quite easy and there’s really only two places you ever need to be aware of. Having a system of storing files on your own computer is, in my opinion, actually more important than understanding where they go on the server.

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Popularity: 23%

What is web hosting and why the hell do I need it anyway? Great question that deserves a decent answer. One of the first things I taught to my students was this concept of where their website was physically located. In order to view a website or a blog, it has to have a home. The files, images and content have to be on a server somewhere in the world so that when your domain name is typed in, it displays what you want it to display.

Your Wordpress blog has a home on a web server. The web server is a computer located somewhere in the world and may be shared by many other blogs.

The server that stores all your files and serves them out when requested is called a Web Host. Web Hosting is the first thing you will require after purchasing your desired website name (or domain name).

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Popularity: 21%

This is a short video tutorial on how to FTP your files from your local computer to your webhost. You’ve got your new webhost account and you’ve used Fantastico to install Wordpress for the first time but you have no idea how to move files from your computer to your webhost. You may have been told about Cute FTP or WS FTP, but neither are free or as easy as they could be. The solution is FireFTP. FireFTP is a free FTP client for Firefox which allows you to transfer files, Wordpress themes, plugins, images or any other files from your laptop or desktop machine to your webhost server account.

When you first install your wordpress blog using Fantastico, from within cpanel, a default theme is put in place. Once you’ve found another theme you want to use to spice up how your blog looks, you will have to first download the theme, and then transfer those files to your webhost to be used. This is called transferring the files and it’s done through a process of FTPing.

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Popularity: 18%

When you create a blog, your time should be spent almost equally on the building of the blog, creating the content for the blog and the marketing of the blog. Getting inbound links to your website should be just as important as creating the content. I would explain to clients that even the most expensive, creative and best looking website would mean nothing if it was not seen by anyone. The whole purpose of you investing your time and energy into creating your blog is to have it seen, market your product or services or recommend others product or service.

As you spend your time getting inbound links, you want to be able to measure your results in some format so you know how well your marketing efforts are performing.

One great little tool for the first time blog builder is Link Popularity Check. It allows you to enter your domain name (or multiple domain names) and track how many individual links are pointing at your site as well as total link volume.

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Popularity: 16%

Timothy Ferriss, author of the 4 hour work week recently posted 5 Uncommon Timesavers for bloggers on problogger. These two caught my eye because they’re both very common for me to do, so I thought I would pass it along.

2. Post less to be read more.

No matter how good your material is, too much of it can cause feed-overwhelm and unsubscribes. Based on input from close to a dozen top bloggers I’ve interviewed, it takes an average of three days for a new post to propagate well in the blogosphere. If you write too often, pushing down the previous post and its visibility, you decrease the reach of each post, run the risk of increasing unsubscribes, and create more work for yourself. Test posting 2-4 times per week—my preference is two—and don’t feel compelled to keep up with the frequency “you have to post three times before lunch” Joneses. Quality, not quantity, is what spreads.

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Popularity: 19%