Since I spent the last 7-10 days setting up my site for Niche Rivalry I figured now would be a good time to make a post about it.  It took a bit longer than I expected, but that was primarily because I finally got around to using (rather, learning) the Catalyst Theme, which I’ll talk about in a little more detail later.

Before we get started keep in mind that I’m not an expert in setting up a WordPress site.  So, if you’ve got any better ways of doing things or any cool tips or tricks I’d love to hear them.

Domain Name Registrar

If you’ve checked out my Resources page you’ll know that I use a registrar named Internet.bs Corp.  This is the only place I’ve ever registered a domain, besides Bluehost (which I don’t recommend).  I’ve taken a look at NameCheap and GoDaddy, but they’re always a bit more expensive and I haven’t heard a single good thing about GoDaddy lately.

How Does a Domain Name Registrar Work?

This is the place where you choose what you want the name of your site to be, for example, chasingpace.com.  You can find the ICANN accredited registrars here.  If you register a domain somewhere besides your hosting company, all you have to do is point the domain name servers at your hosting company.  It’s very simple, and the first time I did this I utilized the live support offered by Blue Host and Internet.bs to walk me through it.

Hosting

In the past I’ve used Bluehost on all my sites.  However, I’ve got a little over 10 sites on my account so I thought it would be a good time to expand a little.  For Niche Rivalry I went with HostGator, though still on a shared hosting accounting.

Both of these hosting companies are very reputable and very similar in setup, though I personally prefer Bluehost just a little bit more.  There’s tons of videos on YouTube that will walk you through the set up if this is your first time, but I honestly learned the most just by spending about 30-40 minutes asking questions on their live support.  I actually called them to help set up my first site and basically started the conversation with, “Okay, I have no clue what I’m doing, all I know is I want to get WordPress on my site, can you help?”

Just remember if you’re signing up for the first time you don’t need to purchase a domain from them, in fact it’s likely close to twice the cost.

WordPress

I’ll be using WordPress as my platform.  To date that’s all I’ve used and it’s unbelievably simple, so no reason to switch.

Setting Up WordPress

I’m not going to go into all the details, but I wanted to share a few basic things that I do for all my sites.

Settings > Media.  I always uncheck, “Crop thumbnail to exact dimensions (normally thumbnails are proportional),” just because it irritates me to have things auto-cropped.

Settings > Privacy.  If you’re not going to be adding content for a while, go ahead and set this to “Private.”

Settings > Permalinks.  I always use the “/%postname%/” structure, and recommend this for SEO purposes.

Choosing a Theme

This is one area where I’m pretty picky.  I don’t particularly like free themes (I know a lot of people will disagree with me on this point).  For a lot of people they work great, but I’m not a CSS expert, nor do I want to spend even more time than I already do trying to get a site to look a certain way.

For this site I’ll be using Catalyst Theme.   I’ve only been using it for a little over a week and so far I absolutely love it.  I’ve never had a theme that was this easy to customize.  This is definitely going to be my “go to” theme for a lot of sites in the future.

Here’s a quick screen shot of what my site looks like so far, though I’m not quite sure if I like it, so you may see some more changes in the future.  (I haven’t put the URL on here, but I’m sure you can figure it out )

Let me just emphasize that you do not need a paid theme.  People that use free themes make just as much as those who use paid themes.  I just haven’t been lucky with getting any of the free themes to do exactly what I want (without a ton of work).

Plugins

The plugins listed below are all the ones I plan on using for Niche Rivalry.  I’ve broken them down as mandatory (plugins I install on every site) and optional (plugins that may vary from site to site).  You can find all these simply by going to Plugins > Add New and typing them into the search bar.  These are all free plugins.

Mandatory

• Askimet
• All in One SEO Pack
• Google XML Sitemaps
• Contact Form 7
• Better WP Security
• Secure WordPress
• Login Lock

Optional

• Advanced Recent Posts Widget
• Get Social
• Jetpack (primarily for WP Stats)
• nRelate Related Content

*I’m also considering using Uber Menu, if I can figure out how to use it   It’s not free though.

All in One SEO Pack is really the only one that requires any setup.  Most of it is self explanatory, like filling in your site name, description and keywords.  I leave everything checked, plus I also check “Use No Index for Archives” and “Use No Index for Tag Archives.”  Here’s a quick screen shot of the only portion that I change a bit.

Pages

At the very least I recommend creating the following pages:

• About.  Spend a little bit of time on this page instead of writing something like, “This site is the number one site on kitchen gadgets.”
• Contact.  Add a few sentences about why/when people should contact you and add your contact form.
• Privacy Policy.  You could use the “Easy Privacy Policy” plugin, but I use a template I created a while back.
• Earnings Disclaimer.  Many affiliates require some type of disclaimer to your readers that you are making money off the products on your site.
• Images and Testing.  I create this page just to house some images that I like to grab for widgets.  I don’t publish it, it just acts as a hub for me to grab source code for images, something that can come in very handy for putting images and other features in your sidebar without hand writing HTML code.

That’s it for now, gotta get back to creating some more content for the site!  Stay tuned, I’ll be discussing my content strategy next and then the post a lot of you have been asking for, my backlinking strategy.

Don’t forget to sign up below and receive a copy of Niche Chaser; this is where all my site building begins!

Other Posts in the Niche Rivalry Series

• Niche Rivalry: The Rivalry Begins (12/21/11)
• Niche Rivalry 002: Finding Seed Keywords the Easy Way (12/29/11)
• Niche Rivalry 003: Revealing the Niche (1/2/12)
• Niche Rivalry 004: Site Setup (1/9/12)