Of Blogrolls and Widgets
Part of “Going self-hosted with Wordpress : A Wolfie Guide” [PDF]
I realised that there were a couple of major elements that I didn’t cover in my recent post about going self-hosted with Wordpress. Those were importing your Blogroll and which Widgets you can have as standard and which ones you’ll have to hunt for. These two items, plus what I covered in To self-host or not… should then put your blog back into the same state that it was when it was hosted at Wordpress.com.
So, Blogroll. You’ve probably got loads of links in yours - I certainly had quite a number in mine when I decided to transfer - but they don’t get exported with everything else when you create your export XML file. Not sure why, but the way they’re managed in the dashboard probably has something to do with it.
At the time that I transferred this blog, I didn’t know that you could export them; I could see an “Import” button in the Blogroll dashboard, but not an “Export” one. So I moved all mine by hand, one by one. I decided to dump a few of them during this process, so it did allow me to do a bit of spring-cleaning that I perhaps might not have done, but it was a slow tedious process. But you don’t need to go through that process; there is a quicker, easier way - it’s just not obvious.
The “Import” function requires an OPML file. Apparently this stands for Outline Processor Markup Language; what that means I have no idea, but it’s a file type related to XML (what you used to export all your posts) which, as I understand it, should be understood by pretty much any system going. So how do you get your Blogroll into an OPML format?
Well, you don’t really need to if you’re importing from a Wordpress.com blog. Go to Blogroll in the dashboard of your self-hosted blog and click “Import”. Here you’re presented with two boxes - one asking for an Internet address or one offering the opportunity to upload a file from your local machine. You want the first one.
In this box type the URL of your Wordpress.com blog, followed by “/wp-links-opml.php” (so it would look like this: http://yourusername.wordpress.com/wp-links.opml.php). Before you click “Import OPML File” a word of caution; if you have your links in categories (like I have Wolfs Links and Wolfs Reading”), you will have to re-assign the categories once you’ve done the import; the import process will not recognise them. Now go ahead and click the button; you’ll get a screen that will tell you which links have been imported and you can then manage them in the usual way.
So that’s your Blogroll done. Now onto widgets.
Widgets, as we know, can be immensely useful and we’ve all got quite a few on our blogs, I’m sure - even if we’ve just stuck with the default ones that come with our theme. If widgets are not something you use, you’ve got nothing to worry about, otherwise there’s some information that you might find useful.
Not all of the Wordpress.com standard widgets are available with Wordpress.org. Well, that’s not quite true. They are available (probably), but they’re not available as standard. “Top Posts”, for example, is not available as standard, nor is “Blog Stats” and while you can have a “Tag Cloud” you can’t have a “Category Cloud”. If any of these (or things like Flickr and Sonific) are important to you, be aware that you will have to go looking for them on the Wordpress.org site, download them and (using FTP) install them yourself. It’s not that difficult a process, but can be daunting for a new user.
Well, that covers importing your Blogroll and gives you a heads-up on the widget front. Your blog should now be at a stage where you’re happy enough for readers to come calling. Everything else is really just tweaking and in upcoming articles I’ll try and cover subjects like:
Where are my Wordpress stats?
How do I install new widgets?
What’s all this about editing my theme?
I’m really on a journey of discovery as far as self-hosting is concerned and am learning to do these things as I go along. These are the issues that I’m finding are relatively easy to do once you know how, but finding out how can sometimes be tricky.
To self-host or not to self-host?
Part of “Going self-hosted with Wordpress : A Wolfie Guide” [PDF]
As I’ve mentioned, I started blogging nine months ago using the multi-user platform Wordpress.com. It is a great introduction to the world of blogging, as it makes it really easy to get yourself set up and publishing - the only thing holding you back is whether you can think of something to write about.
But as you go on, you start to realise that, good as it is, Wordpress.com is quite restrictive in what it allows you to do. You can’t have javascript in your sidebar widgets; you can’t alter your theme unless you buy the CSS upgrade - and even then you can only alter the way it looks, not the way it works; you can’t have anything commercial, like Adsense or services like PayPerPost; and a host of other things, which will be more or less important depending on what you want to achieve with your blogging.
There are alternatives, like Blogger, which still do all the work for you but give you more control over what you can do - but they’re not as nice to use as the Wordpress software. So you start to consider the possibility of buying yourself a domain name and hosting the blog yourself. This is what I’ve recently done with The New Wolf’s Howl.
People start to worry when you talk about self-hosting; they look at you as if you’re talking some sort of strange, new foreign language. They assume that it’s really technical and they won’t be able to do it, or they assume that it’s really expensive and it’s not worth it. I’ll be honest, it’s not the ideal solution for everyone but it doesn’t have to be technical and it doesn’t have to be expensive. The question you need to ask yourself is whether your blog is worth a little bit of effort to learn some new skills and perhaps install a new piece of software? There are things that Wordpress.com does for you at the moment that you will have to do for yourself if you move - are you prepared to put in that extra bit of work for the extra freedom you’ll get? Can you handle a little bit of FTP?
If you’re tech-savvy enough to be thinking about moving because you can’t have javascript in your sidebar widgets, or you’re thinking of getting the CSS upgrade because you want to be able to change the header image on your theme then you should have no problems going self-hosted. If you’re perfectly happy with what Wordpress.com provides for you and there isn’t anything about your blog you need to change then I’d suggest that you don’t need to go self-hosted - at least not yet.
The first thing to consider is what you need your website to do; the possibilities are endless and you can pretty much do anything you want. But you need to decide first (at least roughly) what you want your website to do, as this may influence the services you buy and the level of technicality that will be involved. For the purposes of this guide, we’re going to assume that all you want to do at this stage is host your blog.
So the first thing you need to do is to get yourself some hosting. There are literally thousands of companies out there that will offer you this service, and they’ll offer it to you at all sorts of prices. As with many things, you do get what you pay for so beware of anything that’s really cheap - but at the same time, don’t go spending lots of money on things you really don’t need. There are two services that I would recommend:
A Small Orange: I heard about this one from Timethief, and they offer various hosting plans to suit all different needs and budgets. I’ve gone for their Tiny plan initially, as this gives me everything I need to get up and running here at The New Wolf’s Howl with the option to increase the services if I need to. I paid $10 to register the domain name (http://wolfshowl.com) for a year, and I paid $15 for a six-month Tiny plan. (A full year is only $25, but I wanted to try out the service).
Hosting Unlimited: this is a UK based service that offers, again, a choice of plans to suit your needs. They’ll charge you £8.50 to register a .com domain and £22.95 for their Standard plan for 12 months. I’ve used this service through the company I work for.
Both of these services are basically the same, but the refinement of what each package offers is slightly different. Both sites can register your domain for you as part of the sign up process, both will give you email addresses, web space, a decent amount of bandwidth per month and online technical support. I haven’t has to use the support for Small Orange yet, but Hosting Unlimited is very good. There’s plenty of information available about each of the services to enable you to make your choice.
The big advantage for someone wanting to move to a self-hosted Wordpress blog is that both of these services offer cPanel (many other hosting companies do). cPanel is where you control everything about your new website, from setting up your email accounts to managing your SQL databases. But, daunting as that may sound to some of you, it’s actually really easy.
What we want to know is how to install Wordpress. Well, that takes about five clicks of a mouse; included within cPanel is a service called Fantastico. This is a resource for lots of functionality you can add to your website - message boards, shopping carts, guest books, etc - but which has all been set up in such a way that it gets installed for you. To install Wordpress from within Fantastico, you just need to tell it what folder you want to install it to (if all you want on your website is your blog, you don’t even need to give it a folder), give it a username, password and email address and that’s it. Click a couple of “Continue” buttons and you’ll get a “Finished” message. It takes less than a minute.
Assuming you’ve installed Wordpress in your ‘root’ folder (you didn’t enter a folder name when asked), when you visit your website now at http://yourdomain.com you’ll be presented with your blog. You’ll notice that there’s nothing there yet (just the usual Wordpress “Hello World” entry” but that’s because you haven’t made any entries yet.
When you use Wordpress.org software - which is what you just installed through Fantastico - you still get a dashboard like you do with Wordpress.com. To access it, just add “/wp-admin” to the end of your domain name - http”//yourdomain.com/wp-admin. That’ll present you with the familiar Wordpress log in screen; enter the username and password that you created in the set up process and you’re in.
The first thing you’ll want to do is to bring in all your posts and comments from your Wordpress.com blog. Again, this is just a question of a few clicks of a mouse. First of all, go back to your Wordpress.com dashboard, and click the “Manage” button. You’ll see there are various options, including one called “Export”; click that and you’re presented with a simple screen. Leave ‘Restrict Author’ set to the default of “All” and click the “Download Export File” button.
What you’re now doing is downloading an XML-format file that contains all of your posts and comments; don’t let that XML nonsense put you off - all you need to do with the file is save it somewhere so that you’ll be able to find it later (the desktop is usually a good place).
Now go back to the dashboard of your shiny new domain (http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin). You’ll see that it looks pretty much the same as the Wordpress.com one; there are a few differences, but we’ll get to those later. For now, what you need to do is reverse the process you’ve just gone through - you need to import what you just exported.
So, staying on your self-hosted dashboard go to “Manage” again. This time you need to click “Import”. This will then present you with a list of blog types that you can import from. As you’ve just created your export file in Wordpress, that’s the one you need to click on.
You’ll be asked to put in the path to the export file you made; click the “Browse” button and locate the file on your desktop (or wherever you saved it) and then click the “Upload file and import” button. Wordpress will then upload your XML file and import all your posts and comments to your new blog. Again, a simple process that should only a take a minute or two.
So, from a content point of view your new, self-hosted blog is now exactly the same as the one that was hosted at Wordpress.com. But it probably doesn’t look the same, and this is where the differences between the two breeds of Wordpress start to make themselves apparent.
Your Wordpress.com blog has a particular look to it - a theme. You chose it from the relatively small number that are available to Wordpress.com users in their dashboards, under the “Presentation” tab. Wordpress.org also uses themes, but there are 100’s available to you through Wordpress - and probably 1,000’s more available from websites all over the Net. Unfortunately, only two come installed as standard and if you want more, you have to install them yourself.
This isn’t a difficult process, but if you haven’t done it before it can seem a little overwhelming. To do it, you have to use a process known as File Transfer Protocol - FTP. Basically, your computer talks to another computer that is hosting your website and says “Here you go; have some files!”. There are many different programs out there that will allow you to transfer files in this way, and the one that’s right for you will vary depending on how simple you need the process to be. If you already know how to FTP, you’ve probably got your favourite but if you’ve never done it before here are a couple that I’d recommend:
For Mac users: Cyberduck. This is donation-ware (in other words, you don’t have to pay for it but if you find it useful, you could make a donation to help keep the project going). Whilst it offers all sorts of bells and whistles that make it appealing to the tech-heads, it’s also really simple to use for anyone that’s never done this sort of thing before. You just need to know a couple of bits of information - your domain name and your username and password - and your set.
For Windows users (if we can’t persuade you to move to a Mac): CuteFTP. This you’ll have to pay for (a trial version is available) but it is one of the best Windows FTP programs available. Again, fairly simple to set up - the instructions supplied are pretty good - but you’ll need to supply a bit more info. Don’t worry, though, it’s all info that you’ll have been given by your hosting provider.
If you’ve gone with one of the hosting providers that offer cPanel, you can even install your FTP program through them. From your cPanel, click the option for “FTP Accounts”; you’ll then presented with a list of “Account Management” options; on the line that contains either your username click “Configure FTP Client”. This then takes you to another screen where you can install either Filezilla or CoreFTP for Windows and Cyberduck for Mac. Each program is given dedicated instructions, and the process will also set up the correct settings for you to access your online files.
Once you’ve got your program installed and set up, then using it is like using Finder on Mac or Explorer on Windows; you transfer files from one folder to another as you would one your computer normally; the only difference is that you’re doing it between two computers that are connected over the Net. If you’ve got a home network already, you’ll be familiar with the concept.
So you’ve got yourself all set to use FTP to upload your new theme; you just need to find it. A lot of the themes that are available on Wordpress.com are available to Wordpress.org users. Go to the Theme Viewer and you’ll see that there are over 100 pages of them! Luckily, there’s a search function, and you can use the sorting options to narrow the selection down to ones that interest you.
Once you find one you like, download it. Again, put the file somewhere you can find it - the desktop is a good place. It’ll only take a matter of seconds to download. What you get is a ZIP file; double-click it to unzip it and within there should be a folder, which contains all the files needed for your new theme. This folder is what you need to upload (FTP) to your website. Using your chosen FTP program, upload the theme folder to the folder called wp-content/themes that you’ll find on your website.
When that’s done, go back to your dashboard (http://yourdomain/com/wp-admin), click the “Presentation” tab, and select the theme you’ve just uploaded and make it the active theme. Now when you look at your website, you’ll see all your content, looking really good in the theme you’ve chosen for it.
So that gets you up and running with either the same theme you had at Wordpres.com, or one that you like better. The next installment of this Guide will go into a bit more detail about what other differences you might come across and the new things that you can do with your self-hosted blog.
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