Salad Recipes

Use a good strong blue cheese, such as Roquefort, in this slaw. Mexican sour cream is richer and thicker than regular sour cream, but either will work fine.

Ingredients
1 head of green cabbage, sliced thinly
½ cup finely shredded carrot
¼ cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
¾ cup crumbled Roquefort cheese, divided
½ cup Mexican sour cream or regular sour cream
½ cup mayonnaise
½ cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon finely minced garlic
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
½ teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
Dash of hot sauce

Instructions
1. Place cabbage, carrot and parsley in a large bowl and set aside.
2. In another bowl, whisk together 1?2 cup Roquefort cheese and remaining ingredients until smooth. Pour over cabbage and toss to coat. Cover and refrigerate 1 hour before serving.
3. Sprinkle with remaining Roquefort cheese before serving. Serves 10.

Ingredients
Dressing:
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1 small garlic clove, pressed
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
Coarsely ground black pepper

Salad:
10 cups coarsely chopped lettuce (romaine and Boston)
2 medium tomatoes, cored and chopped
1 1/2 cups chopped, cooked boneless, skinless chicken breast (about 9 ounces)
6 bacon strips, cooked and crumbled
3 hard-cooked eggs, chopped
1/2 cup (2 ounces) crumbled Roquefort or blue cheese
1 avocado, pitted, peeled and chopped

Instructions
1. To prepare the dressing, combine all ingredients in a jar, cover tightly and
shake vigorously.
2. To prepare the salad, arrange lettuces on a large serving platter, big enough to toss the salad. Arrange tomatoes in a strip down the center and arrange chicken, bacon, eggs, and cheese in strips on either side of tomatoes. Scatter avocado around edge.
3. Before serving, slide the salad into a large bowl; pour dressing over top and toss gently to combine. Serves 6.

Two old standbys, deviled eggs and potato salad, join forces to make a potato salad that’s a real crowd pleaser.

Ingredients
2 1/2 pounds (about 5 large) russet potatoes, peeled and cut in 1/2-inch
chunks
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup sour cream
3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon salt
Coarsely ground black pepper
3 celery stalks, diced
3 hard-cooked eggs, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley, plus additional for garnish
Instructions
1. Place potatoes in large saucepan; add cold water to cover. Cover and bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer, partially covered, 10 minutes or until tender. Drain, transfer to a large bowl and cool 5 minutes.
2. Whisk together mayonnaise, sour cream, mustard, salt and pepper in a medium bowl. Combine potatoes, celery, eggs, parsley and mayonnaise mixture. Mix gently with a large rubber spatula. Garnish with additional parsley. Serves 10.

Ingredients
1/4 cup olive oil
4 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons grainy Dijon mustard
1/8 teaspoon salt
4 large Portobello mushroom caps
4 ounces goat cheese, room temperature
1 small bunch baby arugula, stems trimmed
16 grape tomatoes, halved
Instructions
1. Whisk together oil, vinegar, mustard and salt.
2. Place mushroom caps on a plate, and drizzle them with half of the vinaigrette. Broil mushrooms in a shallow ovenproof pan or grill on a rack for about 5 minutes (rounded side up).
3. Turn caps over and top with goat cheese. Return to the oven or grill to slightly melt cheese.
4. In a medium bowl, toss arugula with remaining vinaigrette and tomatoes. Spoon arugula mixture into four plates; top each with a warm, cheese-topped mushroom. Serves 4.

Sweet and juicy Bartlett pears are perfect for this salad. Ripen them on the counter until they have a delicious “pear” aroma, and then refrigerate until it’s time to make the salad.

Ingredients
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, divided
1?4 teaspoon salt
1?4 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
3 firm-ripe pears, such as Bartlett, cored and cut in bite-size chunks
2 cups shredded or thinly sliced cabbage
1?3 cup thinly sliced celery
1?3 cup coarsely chopped pecans, toasted
1?3 cup dried cranberries

Instructions
1. Whisk oil and 3 tablespoons lemon juice together in a small bowl. Add salt and pepper.
2. Combine pears and remaining lemon juice in a large bowl. Add cabbage, celery, pecans, cranberries and oil mixture and mix gently. Serve on lettuce leaves. Serves 8.

The arugula, with its mustardy quality, is a piquant, leafy complement to the potatoes. If arugula is not available, spinach is a good alternative.

Ingredients
2 pounds potatoes, red-skin or fingerling
1 pound mixed baby summer squash
4 large shallots, thinly sliced
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup olive oil
5 ounces arugula

Instructions
1. Wash potatoes and baby squash and cut into bite-sized chunks.
2. Cook potatoes in boiling salted water 6 to 8 minutes or until tender. Drain.
3. Blanch baby squash in a large pot of boiling water for 1 minute. Drain and rinse in cold water to stop cooking.
4. Whisk together shallots, garlic, mustard, salt, black pepper and vinegar. Whisk in olive oil.
5. Toss potatoes and squash with vinaigrette. Chill.
6. Fold the arugula into chilled potato mixture. Adjust seasonings and vinegar to taste before serving.

A small serrated knife works well for sectioning the fruit. Do this over a large bowl to catch the juices, and save some for the dressing.

Ingredients
3 seedless oranges
6 cups baby arugula
1 red apple, cored and thinly sliced
3 tablespoons freshly squeezed orange juice
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1?4 teaspoon kosher salt
1?8 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
1?2 cup (2 ounces) crumbled feta or blue cheese
Instructions
1. Grate rind from 1 orange into a small bowl and set aside.
2. Peel all oranges and section. Reserve juice, squeezing more for the dressing if needed. Combine arugula, orange sections and apple in a large bowl.
3. Whisk 3 tablespoons orange juice, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper with orange rind. Pour over salad and toss gently. Spoon onto serving plates and sprinkle with feta. Serves 8.

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If you listen to all of the “gurus” on the internet right now, then you know that nearly all of them are preaching the message that you need to have your own membership site.

Creating and maintaining a membership site used to be a job for expert programmers, database administrators, and web developers, and the average “little guy” internet marketer was left out in the cold. Most could not afford to hire these experts and therefore owning a membership site was out of the question.

Those days are gone forever. Anyone now can afford to have their own membership site. You can easily learn what you need to know to create your own site quickly, easily, and at very low cost.

You can purchase a video tutorial at very low cost that shows you step-by-step how to create a membership site using WordPress (which is free), and a plugin, which varies in price from a free one on up to one that costs around $150, that will handle Paypal billing and keep up with your membership.

Some of the “big guys” in membership site ownership use the Joomla content management system to manage their membership sites. Again, there are low cost videos available that will teach you how to install and configure Joomla and use it to manage a membership site. Joomla is a powerful content management system. There is a large selection of professionally created templates available, so you can get the exact look and feel that you want for your site.

Instead of selling your products one at a time, why not consider putting them in a membership site? If you have a hobby, a passion for some subject, an expertise in some field, put it in a membership site. Imagine getting 10 people a month paying you $19.95 per month, month after month! What if you had 100 people paying you $19.95 per month? What if you had 500 or 1000 people paying you $19.95 per month?

Yes, membership sites are the way to go, and with the training and software now available, anyone can build their own membership site and have it up, running, and bringing in a monthly income in no time at all!

My very first membership site took me a total of about 4 days to build, and at a cost of less than $100.00. I knew exactly nothing when I started, so anyone can do it.

Video tutorials are available at TutorDaddy.com and they can speed up the process of getting your membership site up and running.

If you use WordPress to build a membership site, you will need a good membership site plugin to manage membership chores, and you can find information on a couple of good ones at Digital Access Pass and at YourMember.

Give it a try, I think you will find it enjoyable and rewarding.

Can I use a “blog” to build a membership site?

What is the best “blogging” platform to use?

Good questions that may seem to have obvious answers to the “seasoned internet user”, but maybe not so obvious to the ones just starting out on their internet journeys.

“Blog” is an abbreviated version of “weblog,” which is a term used to describe web sites that maintain an ongoing supply of information and news.

A blog is a frequently updated personal (or business) website featuring diary-type commentary and links to articles and/or other web sites.

Blogs range from the personal to the political, the sublime to the ridiculous, and they can focus on one narrow subject or a whole wide range of subjects.

Many blogs focus on a particular topic, such as health, dating, dog training, web design, politics, sports, or mobile technology.

Some are more into just presenting links to all manner of other sites, mostly affiliate links that pay them when someone purchases a product after clicking one of the links..

And others are more like personal journals or diaries, presenting the author’s daily life and thoughts.

Whatever they are used for, blogs are ideally suited to building membership sites.

How does a person create a blog, you ask?

WordPress is probably the most popular and most powerful and versatile blogging software, and when I talk about blogging, I’m talking about using WordPress as the platform.

As far as using WordPress to build membership sites, I can say that it is definitely a very good way to get started. It is also a very low cost way to get started.

Membership sites are one of the hottest money makers on the web right now, and more and more people are creating an extra monthly pay check by building their own membership sites.

If you have a passion for a particular subject, almost any subject, chances are that a lot of other people have the same passion. Create a membership site where all of those people can mingle online with other like-minded people, and you are set to go.

If you have an expertise in a field, create a membership site, charge a monthly fee for others in the field to access your information, and you have money coming in every month, month after month.

You can find video tutorials that will guide you through all of the steps and show you exactly how to create membership sites using WordPress at TutorDaddy.com.

If you use WordPress to build a membership site, you will need a good membership site plugin to manage membership chores, and you can find information on a couple of good ones at Digital Access Pass and at YourMember.

Installing WordPress for the first time and getting it configured correctly can be a little intimidating, so watching a video tutorial on how to install WordPress can really give you a jump start on getting a membership site up and running.

In conclusion, if you want to build a membership site that costs almost no money, is easy to update and manage, and brings in a monthly recurring income, then I suggest you give WordPress a really close look.

This is not meant to be a tutorial on how to build a membership site. It is meant to give you information on platforms such as Joomla and WordPress that can easily be used to create membership sites.

It is also meant to give you information on components, plugins, and custom themes that you can use to accomplish the task with minimal cost and effort.

First of all though, why would you even want to have a membership site? The answer, of course, is that owning memberships sites can earn you a recurring monthly income. That means money in your bank account…..month after month after month.

Some reasons to start a membership site…..

• You have a book or ebook with some really great content that people would be interested in. Rather than try to sell the book or ebook as a one-time sale, break it up into sections and put it on a membership site, giving members access to one chapter or section each month. So, rather than sell 100 copies at $37 each and making $3700, charge 100 people $9.95 per month and give them a chapter each month for 12 months. Do the math on that and see what you come up with.




• You don’t really feel that you could sit down and spend several months, or years, writing a complete book or ebook and put it up for sale, but you could sit down each month and write a really good article to put on your membership site. That approach takes less time initally, and gives you a recurring income each month right off the bat.




• You want a site that gives you a captive audience that you can sell other products to each month. Affiliate products, other ebooks you own, adsense ads, all are opportunities to make even more money from your membership site members.




• You have knowledge or expertise in a subject or area that other people are interested in. People are willing to pay to belong to a group of like-minded people. Membership sites have been started on subjects such as:




• Cabin Enthusiasts,




• Fly Fishing Enthusiasts,




• Wedding Professionals,




• Cruise Ship Workers,




• Magic Enthusiasts,




• Acupuncture Professionals,




• Digital Photo and Video Enthusiasts,




• Travel Lovers,




• Golden Retriever Owners,




• Ferret Owners,




• Gambling Information Seekers,




• Religious Groups,




• Philosophy Lovers,




• Art Lovers,




• Home Builders,




• Dress Makers,




• Car Salespeople ,




• Cross-Stitch Enthusiasts,




• and on-and-on….

Trouble is though, building a membership site from scratch can be intimidating, even impossible, for a lot of people.

However, with the right instructions and a helping hand, you can easily do it using either Joomla or WordPress as the platform.

Since both are free applications, and components and plugins are readily available for both, you can do it for very low cost.

Video tutorials are available that will show you step by step how to setup your own membership site. You may choose to use free components or plugins to create a basic membership site. You also may choose to create a more advanced membership site using components or plugins that are available at very reasonable prices considering the advanced features they offer.

Detailed step by step video tutorials can show anyone, regardless of experience level, how to create a membership site that can possibly produce an ongoing and sizable income .

You can learn how to install your choice of Joomla or WordPress, and then be shown how to install and configure the necessary components or plugins to convert it into a paid membership site.

Creating a recurring monthly income is an established method that really does work. It is used extensively by many successful and savvy marketers.

Still not sure you can do it, even with detailed instructions? Don’t worry – it is easier than you think.

Picture this scenario – you make ten sales today for $47.00. OK, you made $470.00. Not bad at all. Now imagine that you have a membership site and you make those same ten sales, and they sign up for your monthly membership. You made the same $470 today, plus you rake in $47 per month, per member, for as long as your customers remain members. If they only remain members for four months, you just made $1810 over the four months for the same amount of effort on your part. Meanwhile you continue to make daily sales and your recurring monthly income grows and grows and grows. You are now well on your way to creating a sizable and dependable monthly income.

So, what are the problems you will need to overcome in order to accomplish this?

First…..how do you keep track of your customer activity? You have customers joining every day and some of them unsubscribe from time to time. Keeping track of this can be a big job if you don’t know how to do it the easy way.

Second…..collecting payments can be difficult. You need a choice of ways for your customers to pay for their membership. Without that you limit your chances for success. The solution sounds simple – buy some software to do it all for you. The big problem with that is that software that runs membership sites can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. That is a big problem for a lot of people just starting out.

So…..what is the solution that will allow a person to build a membership site at a reasonable cost, possibly even free?


Let’s Consider Joomla First…..

There is a video tutorial available showing How To Create A Membership Site Using Joomla 1.5 and at a very reasonable cost and it will show you exactly, step by step, how to install Joomla 1.5 and then configure it to be a paid membership site. The components you will need to accomplish this task are either free or very reasonably priced, so you will be able to have a membership site up and running at very low cost.

If you want to go first class and use a professionally designed Joomla template that will make your site stand out above the rest, then take a look at the Joomla templates available at RocketTheme.com.

As mentioned, the components are free or reasonably priced, but that doesn’t mean a lack of features. Look at what you can do using Joomla and the membership software (generally known as components in Joomla).

* Integrated Subscription Handling using the following payment processors: Paycom. CCBill, Paypal, Paypal Subscriptions, epsNetpay, 2Checkout, Authorize.net, Paysgnet, Allopas, Alertpay, Viaklx and more.

* Up To Four Membership Levels. You have the means to offer several different levels of membership to your clients thus increasing your possible profits.

* Integrated Document And File Handling. No worries. Your subscribers can only access the files they paid for and are entitled to receive.

* Integrated Forum. Create your own member forum so your subscribers can talk over items of interest with each other.

* Trial Memberships. Set up trial memberships so your members can take a test drive before they buy.

The above mentioned video tutorial is a seven part video series based on the new Joomla 1.5 series, and it takes you step by step through the whole process. It takes you from knowing nothing about Joomla or putting together a membership site to being somewhat of an authority at it.

And For You WordPress Enthusiasts…..

If you just want a good basic membership site built using WordPress, then there is a video tutorial that will show you How To Build A Membership Site Using WordPress And Free Plugins.

If you want a more advanced and full-featured membership site, then you will want to consider using either YourMember WordPress Membership Site Plugin or Digital Access Pass which works with WordPress as well as regular HTML web sites, and is loaded with features to power a full-blown membership site.

As with Joomla, there are custom templates available for WordPress.

You can purchase templates custom designed to create a professional quality web site themed to almost any type business you can imagine, from real estate to grunge to ecommerce to news sites, you name it and it is probably available to make your site stand above the rest. Check out what’s available in WordPress Custom Themes And Templates

So whether you prefer using Joomla or you prefer using WordPress, there is step by step training available, and there is a choice of components and plugins and templates available to allow you to build a great looking membership site at a very reasonable cost, possibly even free.

Do you get out the trusty old HTML editor, roll up your sleeves, and begin writing the HTML code from scratch? Well, if you have the skill to do it, and you have the time to do it, and you have the patience to do it, then that is one way to get it done.

Or maybe you just get out the trusty old checkbook and write someone a hefty check to do it for you. Well, if you have the money, then that is definitely the easiest way to do it. And then, when you need something added or changed, you can get out the old checkbook again.

What if you need it yesterday, not a few days or weeks or months from now?

What if you want a web site that is easy to add pages and content to, and you want to be able to do it yourself, quickly and easily and without having to get out that trusty old HTML editor, or the old checkbook for that matter?

What if you want a web site that search engines love, and you want to start getting some traffic without spending a fortune on SEO and then waiting and waiting to see the traffic?

What if you want a web site that you can change the look and feel of with just a few clicks of a mouse, and if you don’t like the new look, you can change it back with just a few more clicks?

Well partner, it sounds to me like you are in need of WordPress! More specifically, you need to learn just how powerful WordPress really is!

What kind of WordPress am I talking about when I say “powerful WordPress”?

I’m referring to WordPress “jazzed up” with all of the 100′s and 100′s of themes and plugins that are available to turn plain old WordPress into a thing of beauty as far as web sites go.

And before you roll your eyes and say that WordPress is just for blogs, you better take a closer look. In fact, WordPress, along with all of the readily available plugins and custom themes, can do just about anything you want, and it can do it either at no cost or very low cost, and it can do it very quickly.

You can have a WordPress site installed, configured with basic settings, and some popular plugins and themes installed, in just a few hours, and for zero cost. How’s that for fast and cheap?

• You can create a WordPress site that is a traditional WordPress blog.

• You can create a WordPress site that is suitable for the smallest business right on up to the largest corporation.

• You can create a WordPress site that is a membership site where members pay for your content.

• You can create a WordPress site that is an internet storefront to sell your products.

• You can create a WordPress site that is a content management system.

• You can create a WordPress site that is a combination of any or all of the above.

You can install plugins that do SEO for you, backup your database for you, create Google compliant sitemaps for you, handle product sales and delivery for you, handle membership signups for you, and on and on and on.

Do you begin to get the idea that I like WordPress and think WordPress is a great way to create a web site?

So, exactly what is WordPress, and how can you get it for free?

You can find out all about WordPress, and download it for free, at http://www.wordpress.org/. WordPress is an open source blog software package that anyone can download and install for free.

If your hosting provider has cpanel with Fantastico, and most do, then you can install it in a matter of minutes from there. If not, you can install the files manually.

WordPress makes it easy for anyone to set up, manage and maintain a website, and you can do it without being a total geek.

What if you get stuck and need help? Simply go to http://wordpress.org/support/ and you will find active forums full of people ready to help you solve your problem. How easy is that?

Since WordPress is open source, it’s free. That’s always a nice little benefit.

Since it’s open source it also has a thriving community of developers (geeks) constantly improving the software and creating those plugins I mentioned.

WordPress lets you quickly and easily create pages, which are basically content that is static, and not open for comments, and not organized by time.

WordPress lets you quickly and easily create posts, which are basically the blog part of WordPress, and they are usually organized by time-of-post, are usually open for comments, and they are the content to build out the meat of your site.

With WordPress, there are hundreds and hundreds of free themes available so you can easily manage your site’s look and feel. Check them out and download them for free at http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ .

There are also some really great looking professionally designed themes available for purchase, most at very reasonable prices. These are well worth the money if you want a really professional looking web site. You can see examples of these at iThemes

There are hundreds and hundreds of free plugins available for WordPress, and you can take a look at them by going to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ . There are also many great plugins available that you will pay a reasonable fee for, but if you need a specialized plugin, they are well worth the money.

WordPress is highly customizable, so you can use it for just about anything, and make it do just about anything.

A Few Benefits of Using WordPress:

* Free Or Very Inexpensive! Using WordPress for your web site means it’s either cheap or free. WordPress itself is free, a custom theme is usually in the $50 to $100 range, many themes are even free. End result, you save loads of money compared to the cost of paying someone to design a web site for you.

* It’s So Easy! If you’ve got basic computer skills, WordPress is easy to use. If you can use a word processor like Microsoft Word or even lowly little Notepad, then you can use WordPress. It’s web site creation at it’s easiest.

* You Can Do It Yourself! Get ready Mr. Do-It-Yourselfer! No more need to find and pay a programmer to fix a tiny error, saving you time and money. Need to add some more content or a new page? No problem, you can do it yourself.

* Multiple Users And Accessible On The Internet. WordPress is accessed through an online administrative interface and can allow access to multiple administrators if desired, which means more than one person can login and fix problems that might develop, and you can access it from anywhere that has internet access. So, you lucky dog, if you’re on some beach in the Bahamas, you can access your site. Since your site is on a secure server through your web host, and you have a backup of your site and database on your own computer (you did create that backup, didn’t you?), you are well protected against data loss.

* Content Pleasing To The Great Google. WordPress makes it easy to have a web site that is search engine friendly. That means your web site is more likely to land on the first page of Google results, which means people are more likely to find you, which means people are more likely to spend time, and money, on your web site.

Since this is a rather long article on WordPress, I decided to break it up into three parts.

Coming up in Part 2, we’ll roll up our sleeves and get into the “down and dirty” details of installing and configuring WordPress.

As promised in part 1, part 2 will go into the basic steps to follow in building your WordPress web site.

If you’ve never even heard of WordPress, and you’re wondering what the heck it is, learn all about it at http://www.wordpress.org/

Roll Up Your Sleeves And Let’s Get Started…..

You need to master a few basics and understand a little of the WordPress “lingo”. So, here we go.

With WordPress, you can produce and manage several types of content very quickly and very easily.

Built right in and ready to go is the ability to create and edit Posts, Pages, and Links.

Posts are your basic blog content and are used for standard blog entries. You can create new posts, anytime you want and as often as you want, for your site visitors to read. Posts are normally arranged in chronological order and you can allow viewer comments or not, just as you please.

Pages are basically just posts that aren’t time-driven, they are more permanent content, not open to comments, and they don’t show up in your “recent posts” list. Pages are added as a link in your menu, if you choose to, and serve as the basic meat of your site.

Links are just what the name implies…they are links to whatever outside web sites you wish to make available to your site visitors. This is where you put links to sites you are an affiliate of, sites that are recommended resources for your visitors, and anything else you feel would be of interest to your site visitors.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions…..

Before you start, you need to spend a few minutes and make some big decisions on what type of web site you want and need. If you don’t spend the time now, you may not end up with the web site you want, and then you will have to start all over.

The biggest thing to figure out is what you actually need your website to do. Will it be just a simple blog, will it be a news site, will it be an ecommerce site to sell products, will it be a membership site, will it be a place to post mp3′s produced by your rock band…..what exactly do you need it to be and how do you want it to look?

Once you decide what you want it to be, you need to decide what type of content you will have on it. What kind of content will you need to create and manage?

Do you need posts? Maybe, maybe not. If you’re not creating a blog, you may or may not need to use the post feature in WordPress at all. Or maybe it’s not a blog you’re creating, but you want a section to give site visitors your latest news about your products or services. You can use posts to do that. Since posts normally show in order by date created, visitors would see the latest posts first.

What about pages? Do you need pages at all? If so, how many pages will you need? Since pages normally show up as menu items, will your pages have a hierarchy type dropdown menu, or will each post be a top level menu item?

What about your homepage, how do you want it to look, what do you want to feature on the homepage? You may want just some basic text about your web site, what you do and what you offer, or maybe you want to feature your latest news or latest post.

These are a few of the questions you need to answer. Basically you’re trying to figure out what you want and what you need from your website. Once you have that figured out, it’s easier to find a theme that offers exactly what you want and need.

Next Step…..

Pick a theme that suits your needs and also looks like you want it to. There are free themes and there are professionally designed themes that you purchase, usually for a very reasonable price. If you are building a business web site, you will probably want to invest in one of the professionally designed themes.

The theme on the right is an example of the 100′s and 100′s of themes you can download for free for WordPress.

Now that you know what you want and need in the way of a web site, you need to be sure and pick a theme that can meet those wants and needs. Keep in mind that WordPress makes it very easy to switch themes, so if you find more than one theme that you like, you can install all of them, and switch back and forth until you decide exactly which one is the perfect fit for your web site.

Here are some things to consider when searching for that “just right” theme:

What type of menu system does it feature? Can it display the number of pages you plan on having? Can it handle the hierarchy your site menu will require? If you plan on having a fair amount of hierarchy (categories and sub-categories), a drop down menu might be a must.

How is the theme laid out? Most themes are laid out in “sections” or “boxes” and with various sidebars, such as sidebar left, or sidebar right, or both. Most have a large center box or section, or maybe several smaller ones side-by-side, so make sure the theme’s homepage is laid out like you want.

Very important, is the theme widget ready? If so, you can add and delete sidebar items, and possibly others, with ease. You can do it without widgets, but it’s much harder.

As mentioned in Part 1, there are hundreds of free themes available, and you can check them out at http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/

Two custom themes that I personally use and recommend are iTheme Custom WordPress Themes and StudioPress Custom WordPress Themes. These companies have specialized themes for most any application or niche you can think of.

iThemes has just introduced their new Builder Theme which is probably the most advanced and versatile WordPress theme on the market.

Once you’ve chosen your theme, you’re ready to install WordPress.

There are two ways to install WordPress, the easy way and the hard way.

The hard way is to download the WordPress files directly from www.wordpress.org and then do a manual install. Don’t worry though, even the hard way is not really that hard. Just go to http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress to view the very through instructions provided by WordPress.org. Follow the instruction and you shouldn’t have any problems.

The easy way is to install WordPress from the cpanel in your hosting account. Most hosting accounts have cpanel and a feature called Fantastico which make the install extremely easy.

Coming up in part 3 we will cover:

* Installing your theme
* Installing your plugins
* Entering your site details
* How to write pages
* How to write posts
* Using widgets on your site
* SEO for WordPress

So, be sure and continue with Part 3 to learn more about the power of WordPress.

Next Step…..

Once you’ve got WordPress installed, you’re ready to start setting up your site.

Once you’ve picked a theme and downloaded it, simply unzip it and upload the theme folder to your server at /public_html/wp-content/themes. Then login to your Dashboard, go to design>themes, and click on the theme to make it your active theme. You can click on any one of the themes that are showing to make them the active theme.

Plugins that you want on your site need to be downloaded, unzipped, and uploaded to /public_html/wp-content/plugins. Then go into your dashboard, go to plugins, and click on the activate link to activate any plugins you want to be active on your site. Remember, you can find free plugins at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/

Go into settings and fill in the information on your site details. These items are pretty self-explanatory.

Go to Write>Page to start adding pages to your site. While editing a page you can choose the page parent to determine how it will show in your menu. Remember, the page title will become a menu link. You could write a page titled “My Family” and set it as “Main Page, No Parent” and then you could write a page titled “MY KIds” and a page titled “MY Wife” and set them to have the “MY Family” page as parent. That would give you a dropdown menu, assuming your template supports dropdown menus, with “MY Family” as the main menu item and “MY Kids” and “MY Wife” as dropdowns under it.

You also have the ability while writing the page to select if you want to allow comments or not, if you want it to be password protected, and a few other things.

Go to Write>Post to start writing posts to populate your site with content. As with pages, you can choose some options to determine how the post will display.

With posts, you need to first setup some categories under the settings>manage>categories tab so you can organize your posts into the order you want them in. For instance, you could have a category named “General Interest” and one named “Latest News” and one named “Cooking Tips”, and then organize your posts under the appropriate one.

Under Design>Widgets and Design>Theme Editor, you can customize widgets and theme files if you know a little html, php, and want to give it a shot. The widgets tab usually gives you a list of widgets and a list of sidebars and other areas where the widgets can be placed, and you simply drag and drop the widgets you want into the areas you want them in. You can then edit each widget to make it display as you desire.

Search Engine Optimization…..

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to optimizing your website’s position in search results. Many books have been written about SEO and websites are dedicated to it.

Showing up higher in search results usually means more traffic and more business. That is another reason why using WordPress is such a good idea, because WordPress is especially well suited for boosting your site’s rank in search engines.

How to make your WordPress site SEO friendly…..

You need to research the right keywords for your site and then put those keywords in the right places. Those right places include the title bar (the text that shows up at the top of your browser), any headers, headlines or bold text on a page, and the meta data (helpful information in a page’s code that is not visible in a browser).

How WordPress Helps Your SEO Efforts…..

Right out of the box, WordPress is SEO-friendly. It puts important information in the right places by default, so as long as you fill in the appropriate information in your dashboard settings, you’ll have a good start in the search engine rankings.

However,there are also a number of extra steps you can take to optimize your search engine rank, many of which are either built in to WordPress or easily managed with plugins that are available to download.

Permalinks are the direct urls to your content and optimizing how those links appear is good SEO. There is a place in your dashboard to change the way your permalinks are setup.

There is a plugin you can download and install that creates a sitemap, which is a widely adopted standard among search engines, and helps improve your search rank.

There are SEO plugins available that specifically deal with improving your sites SEO. They are worth the effort if you want to improve traffic to your site.

And Finally…..

Once you have your site up and running and optimized the way you want, you just have to keep it updated with new content. Updates are a breeze with WordPress, which means you can spend more time on your content and less time trying to figure out the tech stuff.

So, what are you waiting for? WordPress can be the right answer for just about any need. It can be the answer to quickly and easily building a professional looking web site for:

• The smallest “mom and pop” business right on up to a giant corporation.

• Service-oriented companies like home builders, plumbers, HVAC contractors, real estate agents, car dealers, etc.

• Consultants, freelancers, and coaches.

• Schools, nonprofit agencies, and churches.

• Bands, artists and creative professionals.

So, that’s it, you are now the proud owner of a great looking web site, a “WordPress On Steroids” web site.

Hope you enjoyed this series on installing and configuring WordPress.

How To Create Your Own Internet Store Using WordPress

Learn how to set up a profitable online store to sell your products without spending one single cent on software.

This one hour video tutorial takes you by the hand and shows you how, step by step & detail by detail

Owning your own e-commerce store can be a very lucrative venture. Just look at Amazon.com. They make a killing selling products online.

You can do that too. You probably will never equal Amazon’s sales success, but you can get started on the path to accomplishing your goals. Just like any other business venture, all you need is a good product and people visiting your store.

Since your store will be online it can basically run itself other than the shipping aspect if you are selling physical products.

There is another kind of store you can build that does run on autopilot…..

• You don’t have to stock it
• You don’t have to ship anything
• The payments are all handled automatically.

This type of store deals with digital downloadable goods.

Our videos will show you how to set up your store using free software that handles the entire process no matter what type of store you want to open. If you are running a physical goods store all you have to do is ship the products. If you are going to run a digital download store it is all automatic after you set it up.

This one hour video tutorial will take you step by step through the process of installing the software and setting up your store. In our example we will show you how to set up a store for digitally downloadable goods. The process is virtually the same as setting up a store for physical goods with a couple of exceptions that we talk about in the video series.

Just think – you could have your own store set up and running TODAY just by following the instructions in these videos.

Don’t wait – get started today!

BUY IT NOW…..

Learn how to bring your ebooks into the twenty first century by publishing in the newest & biggest hot marketplace!

Find out how you, yes you, can publish your ebook to the Amazon kindle platform for absolutely no cost.

This is a huge marketplace that smart marketers are flocking to. Shouldn’t you be one of those smart marketers too?

Read on to find out how you can become a successful Amazon Kindle publisher…..

If you want to have a successful internet business then you must constantly be looking for new marketing opportunities. It is just a simple fact, the more targeted eyes you get to your products the more sales you make. More sales translates to more money in your pocket. We all like that, don’t we?

In the past most of your customers were on their computers looking for information through search engines. If you put in enough hard effort and hours to get your site on the first few pages, people would come to your site and perhaps some would purchase your products if they were interested. This required that the potential customer have a degree of computer literacy, and that they were comfortable paying for products from your website when they didn’t know you are anything about you. Many people are reluctant to pull out their credit card to purchase something under those circumstances.

So, you may as well face it – many people are bypassing your sales process because of these factors.

You can eliminate these problems though!

You can now target the non-computer savvy and untrusting customers.

The people in this marketplace, and there are a lot of them, are finding your product in a whole new way. They are using smart devices and eBook readers such as the Amazon Kindle reader and smart phones and internet tablets running the Kindle app.

This is a huge marketplace, and if you are not in it, you are missing out big time!

It simply is a whole new way of shopping and people have no fear of using it!

Amazon is now the biggest and most trusted online marketplace on the internet, and the simple fact is that having your book published on the Kindle site elicits automatic trust. You will immediately overcome a major sales barrier by being listed on Amazon.

You can see there is good reason for you to be listed on Amazon and the good news is it is free and this video series will show you exactly how to do it.

Here are just a few reasons that you should use the Kindle platform.

• It is totally free to publish on the Kindle platform
• It gives you massive exposure for your ebook
• It gives you instant trust from potential buyers
• It gives you some great cross promotion tools

And lots more.

This video series will show you exactly how to publish a successful Kindle Ebook.

All you will need to do is follow the simple instructions in the videos.

Here is just some of what you will learn:

• How to properly format your ebook
• How to set up your product
• How to use Kindle Digital Publishing
• Advanced traffic strategies

and much more…..

Learn How To Publish Your eBook On Amazon Now…..