Launching a Simple Affiliate Site Part 3
After a week of vacation, and then a second week spent frantically catching up on the backlog of emails and work that poured in while I was away, we’re back on track and ready for part three of our series. As a recap, in Part 1 we covered brainstorming a topic, as well as potential monetization methods. In Part 2, we covered finding and buying a domain name, as well as keyword research.
In Part 3, we’re ready to cover installing Wordpress as the CMS for our affiliate site. This may be a step a lot of you can skip, as Wordpress is really simple and once you install it once, you should be able to install it again without any issues in just a few minutes. For those of you who had never used it before, read on.
What we need to do is set up a MySQL database and user for Wordpress. Many hosts now offer cPanel, which makes this task a breeze.
Just click on the MySQL Databases link…
We want to…
1) Add a new database (write the name of this down somewhere)
2) Add a new user and password (write this down as well)
3) Add the user to the database with all privileges
Simple enough, right?
Now, since we’re going to be using Wordpress, head on over to Wordpress.org and download yourself the latest version. (Make sure you keep up to date on these, new security updates are added pretty often as exploits are found. And, you know… blackhats looking for quick link injection opportunities. Which I’d know noting about. For the record. Ahem)
So, you’ve downloaded Wordpress and have it saved on your hard drive. Now we need to do a bit of editing. Don’t worry – they have made this as simple as possible. All we want to do is look for the file named “wp-config-sample.php” and open it up in Notepad (or whatever your editor of choice happens to be.) Right up at the top we see…
Now, all you need to do is put in your database name, user name, and password. These are the items you just made a few minutes ago. Aren’t you glad I made you write them down? Insert those into the fields labeled ‘putyourdbnamehere’, ‘usernamehere’ and ‘yourpasswordhere’. Like the note mentions, chances are localhost will be fine. If you run into trouble with this, contact your host and they should have an answer for you quickly. If not – it’s time to look for a new host. Now, after we put the three new items in, we want to save the file as “wp-config.php” and get rid of that “sample” that was on the end.
That’s it – you’ve just done all the editing needed. Now, we need to upload Wordpress to our host. You’ll need an ftp program for this. Personally, I use FileZilla since it’s free, easy to use, and available for windows and linux so I don’t have to get used to two different interfaces when I switch from my laptop to my desktops. In 8 years, I’ve yet to find a feature in any of the non-free FTP programs that I’ve needed. Don’t buy one. Seriously. As for your ftp information, it should have been provided by your host. You will normally connect to ftp.yourdomain.com with the username and password you received when you purchased your hosting account.
After you’ve uploaded all the files, you’ll want to go to: http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/install.php and click to install Wordpres.
Fill in your blog title, and email and then hit install. Write down that username and password combo – you’ll need it to log into Wordpress. Don’t worry – you can always change it later on. Congratulations, your site is set up, and ready to be tweaked, filled with content, and monetized.
In Part 4, we will cover uploading new plugins and themes to Wordpress so that you don’t have to keep the standard template. I’ll also share a pack of the free seo plugins I use with every installation of Wordpress, plus recommendations on a premium plugin or two.
affiliate marketing building an affiliate site Next Generation Affiliate Marketing Uncategorized wordpressaffiliate marketing building an affiliate site Next Generation Affiliate Marketing Uncategorized wordpress
