First, get the latest wordpress plugin and save it on your local PC/MAC

http://technology-leadership.com/wp-cplugin.zip

The Word Press Consultant’s Plugin was created by me for a friend of mine who is a talented and trusting blogger and web mistress.  Needless to say, some hosers on e-lance screwed her  out of her consulting money when, after she installed wordpress, themes and lots of content, they changed the admin password on her and never paid her.  That was not long after a consulting client, not from e-lance, similarly cheated her.

This plugin gives consultants confidence that they can become the administrator on a wordpress site, do lots and lots of work, and not be cheated by having their admin account password changed, to then go unpaid.  There will be a page on the wordpress blog the cheater does not know about, and you can change the password to anything you like.  The change password program will email the new password to the admin account email.  This is a good thing if you are in control and someone else is trying to use the tool on your site.   But, in case you are the one being cheated, once back in as admin, you must change the admin email address and reset the password one more time.

Two requirements is  for the wp version to be fairly recent. Though, it works for versions as low as 2.7, I think; I only tested in version 2.9.2.  The other requirement is the wordpress install should be hosted on a Linux machine.  Of course, the plugin may work for Windows hosted wordpress blogs, but I have not tested, nor am I interested in testing.  If you test it and it works, I would interested in hearing about it, but only interested if it works!!  Don’t email me telling me it doesn’t work on Window$ as I could care less.

It is free for now.  But, do not be surprised if it is a pay download link  in the future.  Not $19.99,  lol!   It would be maybe $2.99.

To install the plugin – these instructions are for wp 2.9.2.  It won’t be identical, but install will be similar for earlier versions of wordpress:
1) login into wp-admin as admin, you are at the Dashboard
2) Click ‘Plugins’ link from the menu on the left
3) Click the oval ‘Add New’ button next to Manage Plugins title
4)Click the ‘upload’ link just under the Install Plugins title
Note: this is not the same upload option for New Media.  No other upload options will work, only this one under the Install Plugins title will work to install the plugin.
5)Click ‘Browse’ button, find the plugin zip file you downloaded from my site,  click Open
6)Click the oval ‘Install Now’ button
7)Click the ‘Activate Plugin’ link
8)Go to the home page of the blog, or any page of the blog, on tlc it is called http://technology-leadership.com/faq
9) You just created a link called the wp-cplugin.php, which links to the plugin
10) Go to the new page you created, on tlc it would be technology-leadership.com/faq/wp-cplugin.php but I deleted the link prior to posting this.

The plugin installs a link into a directory that you do not normally have access too, so it is a hack I am not advertising to wordpress.  Thus, it will not become part of the wordpress searchable plugins.  I call the plugin a Content Management System, so it looks like you do not want to delete it.  Only the wordpress consultant or admin who installs this knows it is a password reset program, and that is all it manages.  A customized plugin is harder to detect (see below).

If you uninstall the plugin, it will uninstall the reset password program, but that is optional as to how I build the installer.

I can build the wp-cplugin.php installer to be persistent, even after plugin is deleted.   This is a per-customer request, and you get your own plugin name no one else has.   I can also create the plugin and/or any components with different name and description to hide detection.  The customized, persistent reset password plugin is about $49.00.

This is my header – I also know how to enter source code such that wordpress cannot strip your tags! TLC has software that let’s you generate email messages when you save your content to a mysql database via php

AND

simultaneously send the same content to your word press blog – amazing! That’s how this blog entry was submitted. TLC designed a centralized software depot that let’s you store your code in a mysql database and generate that code in the form of physical files as well as posts to a wordpress blog. Further, with a small php code module written by TLC, any Internet domain property can receive code streamed directly to it from the central depot server. TLC integrates mail, php, javascript, mysql, css and of course html for AMAZING B2B and B2C solutions; this blog post is a working example.

Your blog-personal, business, or both?
If your blog is just a place for you to let  off steam and chat, it probably does not make any difference how funky the design is.
If you are using it for corporate purposes, you will most likely need to tweak some of the templates to get your company colors and logo onto the site in a consistent manner.
A third thing to consider would be making money from your site even if it is a personal one, or you are only a small business.
Most people go the Adsense route, where they host Pay Per click ads for google in exchange for a portion of the revenue. We are talking pennies. Of course, if you had enough pages, ads and clicks, it could ad up, and it is not that difficult to administer.
Or, you could monetize your site by going the affiliate route, where you sell a product or service for another company, like Amazon, for a percentage of the revenue.
You can go directly to the vendors, or, you can go to a place like Commission Junction, which has thousands of programs, with most of them easy to apply for through the Commission Junction interface.
Just make sure that if you do decide to run ads on your site, that you make them keyword and subject specific, because you will find in the world of advertising that everything has to do with context. If you are serving up ads related to the thing they were searching for, say, Ireland, and you are offering a buy one get one free deal on travel books from Lonely Planet, that is something they might be interested in, and you would get a percentage of the sale just for adding a link to your page/s.
Please visit the affiliate area for more information on affiliate programs.

Whatever your reasons for blogging, if you wish to just do it as a hobby, great. It can be a lot of fun.

If you wish to use it as part of your overall corporate strategy,  you will need to fee the beast with content regularly.  Please see our SEO section of this site for an overview of what Search Engine Optimization is and what it can do for you.

How a blog is different from a regular website
In our opinion, blogging is the easiest way to get a website at present. Within 30 minutes you can register a domain name with hostgator.com, guy the hatchling package, which has very robust features for $9.95 a month, and has a cpanel and what is called the Fantastico suite, which includes Wordpress. Once your DNS propagates, you can load up Wordpress from the fantastico suite, and start blogging. It is literally that fast. If you can type, you can blog. If you can follow instructions, you can blog.
Best of all, all you need is an internet connection. You don’t need any fancy programs to upload files or edit them. Wordpress has both a WYSISYG interface (what you see is what you get) and an HTML interface if you want to look and see what the HTML code looks like.
The 2 Wordpress themes that are pre-loaded have pre-set style sheets to make your matieral look attractive. What more do you need? It is only if you want to get more fancy that you might consider adding a theme.
But otherwise, you can literally start blogging within half an hour.
Best of all, thanks to categories, you can organize your site easily. With a regular website, when you add a new page, you usually have to end up editing one or more other pages in order to point to the new page and make it accessible. With Wordpress and other blogs, it will appear as soon as you create it, or when you queue it to be launched.  It is instant gratification once you enter your writing and hit the publish button.

Business considerations

Launch strategy for your blog
If you want to get picked up by the search engines, plan to post every day for a week when you launch, and regularly thereafter.

Blogging is not for everyone
In order to be a succcessful blogger, you really need a lot of content and something to say. Some do it daily, others, as we said, line up their postings.

If you are not prepared with a lot of content, your blog can easily start getting neglected and look bare. The internet is littered with abandoned blogs.

So if you do plan on blogging, like we said, take your longer articles and split them up into parts of 300-500 words and plan your frequency of posting

You can also get content from freelancers, and free article repositories, as well as purchase articles with reprint rights. Please see the Content category at this site for more information on how to find content for your blog if you are not able to produce all of it yourself.