ninjaBlog Setup

One of the most common questions that I get asked is how to upload a new theme to a WordPress blog. So I’ve put together a video which demonstrated the entire process.

There are 2 things required to follow along with the video.

1) An ftp application for transferring the files of the new theme up to your blog. There are many many ftp applications. My favorite, which I demonstrate in the video is FireFTP. This is plugin for the popular FireFox browser, which I highly recommend.

Download FireFox browser (if you don’t already have it)
Then get the FireFtp plugin here. I’ll show you how to install it in the video.

Alternatives:
Smart FTP (free for personal use)
Cyber Duck (for MAC users)

2) The new theme that you’d like to install. The best place to start looking for new themes is the WordPress theme repository.

The rest of the information you’ll need is covered in the video, included a bonus section on copying any code changes that you may have done in your old theme over to the new one.

Click the image below to start the video

Click To Play

In this video I cover how to make some very basic changes to your WordPress theme.

In the first section I open up the stylesheet and change a couple formatting colors. And in the second section I open up the single.php file and show you how to add simple snippets of code that you would like to show up at the bottom of each post.

Click To Play

If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below.

This is a video about how to upgrade WordPress using the Instant Upgrade plugin. In order to follow along you will need to have this plugin installed (it comes standard with any Ninja Blog Setup WordPress Installations).

[Note: if you don’t have the plugin installed, you can visit the Instant Upgrade project page to retrieve the latest version.]

WARNING: before doing any type of changes to your site, you should always perform a backup. The WordPress backup plugin also comes standard with all Ninja Installations, but if you don’t have it, then download and install the WordPress Database Backup plugin before you begin your upgrade.

Click To Play

Quite often the latest versions of WordPress are security updates and they should be performed as soon as possible.

Feed readers can view the video here.

This video will demonstrate how to update your domain name settings so that it is pointing to your web hosting company.

This process needs to be done before you can setup your website with your hosting company. Also note that once this procedure has been completed, it can take up to 48 hours to become operational as the settings need to spread throughout the Internet.

In order to complete this operation, you will need the letter you received from your hosting company when you signed up and the login and password with the company where you registered your domain names.

If you have a question, leave a comment.

Questions about Domain Name Server Settings:

Is it okay to use the same DNS settings for all my sites?

Yes, if your hosting account allows you to host multiple sites on the same account, all of your domains that you are hosting at that account will use the same DNS settings.