Common Mistakes When Setting Up A Wordpress Blog

Pages vs. Categories

Now, I’ve noticed on a few blogs lately the one hurdle that many new wordpress developers stumble on is the whole set up of the blog it’s self, the code as well as the Behind-The-Scenes Dashboard.

Here’s A Big Stumbling Block For Some:

The main problem is how to use the files you have, for example: Do you use the ‘page.php’ file or the ‘archive.php’ file, (used for the categories), as the file to display your most recent posts on the site?

The answer is the ‘archive.php’ file, Do not mix this up with the ‘archives.php’ file, (used for an archive index like on Digging Into Wordpress).
The reason is because wordpress is much easier to handle if you show a page listed with certain posts from certain categories, rather than just using the wordpress pages creator. Because the wordpress page creator makes pages that are, in a sense, very static compared to the use of the categories.

Can I Explain Deeper?

Why yes, yes i can, one of the best ways to show you what i mean is by explaining what the ‘Pages’ should be used for, then I’ll explain why the categories page, (‘archive.php’), is better for showing a list of certain posts.

Here’s a few examples:

1. Net.TutsPlus.com: Go to a page like ‘Tutorials’ and look at the URL, says /category/tutorials right?
2. Tutorial9: Go to the ‘Photoshop Tutorials’ tab, guess what it says?…yup that’s right /category/photoshop
3. Noupe.com: Go ahead and check out the ‘CSS’ nav link.

OK i think you get my point now, the basics of it are that ‘Categories’ work better than pages because they were designed to showcase recent posts in chronological order, however pages where designed to be static-ish pages, used for ‘About Info’ and ‘Favourite Links’ etc..

More examples coming up, and the same sites for more emphasis!:

1. Net.TutsPlus.com: The, (very well done), About page.
2. Tutorial9: The Write For Us page
3. Noupe.com: And the About page for Noupe.

As you can see, in wordpress there’s a place and a use for everything. Although some things just work better in certain places rather than others. As you can see. If you have any problems with this then drop a comment below and I’ll go into even more detail for you

Design of Thou Blog

You won’t see this very much, if at all, but there are a few cases where wordpress blogs are designed by some who wants to be different…but for all the wrong reasons.

Can’t You Be Different?

YES!, the most important thing to understand is that your blog should be and individual, just as you are, and everybody you know. Every blog should have it’s own personality.

However there are some people who tend to make these two classic mistakes:

1. Thinking that by copying another design and changing it up a bit, they’ll have 1 billion readers with the first month. Let’s face it, we’ve seen quite a few Tutorial9 & Noupe knock-offs over the past year or so.
2. Is thinking that by copying content then spamming people with it you’ll get readers…again, NOPE!

The main things to consider when creating a new wordpress blog are the following, Design, Development & Content. Then comes Social Media and Guest Writers etc… You’ll need to be heavily prepared to undertake the challenge of it all, you think that Collis & Cyan made a truck load by sitting there and waiting for the views? No, they took the initiative and got their name out there.

What If You Can’t Design or Develop?

Then find someone who can, i know your probably thinking:

Here’s where the Social Media comes in handy, there are always people who will do the job for you, hell, I’ll do it for you. But my point is that there are always freelancers out there looking for work.

Another good place to go are to freelance job boards, the few i know are the infamous FreelanceSwitch.com Job Board and the DesignM.ag Job Board.
Now i havn’t used either yet, however i hear from reliable sources that the FreelanceSwtich Job Board is the more premiere of the two. I only discovered the DesignM.ag Job Board a ffew days back so i can’t really give my professional opinion yet.

Conclusion/What More To Expect

Is that, you should use ‘Categories’ instead of pages to display your posts. Pages are for about, services and contact info etc… And that your design/content should be unique, if not, then that’s your fault I’m afraid.

By the way, did you all know that Bill Gates has got a new website out? You can read all about it here Anyway i hope you enjoyed my little article, i hope it has given you some insight.

Also I’ll be posting regular articles and tutorials, and maybe even screencasts. That’s right, I’m going to try and rival Jeffrey Way in the screencast department. Look out for it.