Hardin Marketing is excited to be attending WordCamp this weekend at the Wordcamp Atlanta 2012. It will be held at SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design, Atlanta Campus). The fun begins @9AM Friday Morning.

If your in the area, or looking for a weekend get away come out and visit with your WordPress Family. Can’t wait to meet some new faces in the WordPress community. No doubt we will meet some great WordPress developers, visionaries, and even some familiar faces.

If your not from Atlanta Randy Barnes has created this great video below to help you find the Atlanta SCAD campus.
Located at 1600 Peachtree Street Atlanta, GA 30309

If your in the area, or looking for a weekend get away come out and visit with your WordPress Family. Can’t wait to see how the Birmingham WordPress community is using WordPress and Marketing their services. No doubt we will meet some great WordPress developers, visionaries, and even some familiar faces from the Atlanta WordPress Community.

If you were planning on going to the 2012 Atlanta Wordcamp, but haven’t bought your tickets yet,”SOLD OUT“, don’t miss this opportunity to get in on the next closest WordCamp that has plenty of tickets available. $35/person for the weekend, gets you in the doors Sat and Sunday, a lunch on Saturday and a WP Ya’ll WordCamp T-Shirt.

As you all know WordPress has tons of uses. Its original purpose started out as a blog. Since WordPress originally launched back in May 27, 2003, by Matt Mullenweg, 16 versions later WordPress has transformed into a well tuned machine that can be transformed into pretty much everything. Below are the top 5 uses Hardin Marketing has implemented over the years.

WordPress as a blogging system

Obviously this is what WordPress was once created for, so its part of the core installation. Its easy to setup and get going in no time. Unlike wordpress.com, it is fully customizable and can be trasformed into any shape or size you want.

WordPress as a business Website

WordPress allows users of all skill level to have complete access to control the content on each and every page of their website. Its a very cost effective way of launching a website. Adding and managing pages are as simple as adding a new blog post. With the new menu builder feature it makes navigation a breeze. More than half of our business focus goes to customizing WordPress as a Website. The site your on is a great example of WordPress used as a business Website.

WordPress as a shopping cart

WordPress has evolved every year, and as demand for eCommerce solutions grew so did the plugins for adding on a shopping cart to WordPress’s core functionality. My favorite is Shopp Plugin. Its simple and easy to get going. Low overhead, and accepts multiple forms of payment. view a working example of Shopp

WordPress as a portfollio

Doesn’t matter what your industry, WordPress makes a great portfolio tool. There are several free and paid themes to get you going. If your adventurist, you can create your own custom post-types and theme the functionality in yourself. Many photographers, landscapers, home builders etc, use WordPress as their portfolio showcase. View Live Example of WordPress Portfollio

WordPress as a community site.

The WordPress plugin repository offers several options for extending the functionality of your basic WordPress installation. BuddyPress is a great example of how a plugin can transform your site into a mule-user community.

Deciding MAMP or WAMP

This one is easy. Are you a MAC User or a Windows User? If your a MAC User you will need to install MAMP. If your a Windows user you will install WAMP.

Step by Step Directions how to install MAMP

Download the software http://mamp.info/en/ Click Download Now button. It’s a big download, so it takes a while to complete. (MAMP is free, but the download also includes the commercial product, MAMP Pro, which makes administering MAMP easier. You don’t need MAMP Pro for this tutorial, and you don’t have to install it either.) Once downloaded, the file will be in your downloads folder. Click it and it will extract itself, and have another folder where you can select 32bit or 64bit. Select 64 bit, then click the icon inside MAMP.pkg this will open and you will see below.

Continue to install it as you would any program. After its completely installed you can find it in your Applications folder. Find the MAMP folder and click on the icon inside of it to launch your new server. (I suggest making a shortcut to your htdocs as well as a shortcut to the MAMP icon that launches the program as shown below)

Configure MAMP Configuring MAMP is simple, click on the preferences button on the launch screen.

You will see a few tabs with multiple options.

As you may or may not know, port 80 is the standard port for web servers. That being said you will need to change the port 8080 to 80. This can easily be done by clicking Set to default Apache and Mysql ports!

Now that everything is configured click the open start page button.

Now that your up and running create a new database using the phpmyadmin link. Then download the newest version of WordPress and place it in the htdocs folder that can be located by going to Application/MAMP/htdocs. This tutorial is just an intro to getting a local Apache Mysql PHP server running. If you need help installing WordPress on MAMP, there comment below. If I see theres a need, I will create another post on how to install WordPress on MAMP.

Step by Step Directions how to install WAMP

Download the software http://www.wampserver.com/en/ Click Download Now button. It’s a big download, so it takes a while to complete.  Locate the downloaded zip file and extract it. Then launch the installer.

Installing Windows programs are thoughtless. Just continue clicking next until you finally get to the last screen. Since your running Windows, you have a Firewall setup by default. you will need to go to the control panel and disable that, for WAMP to function correctly. Once your firewall is off, your ready to start configuring WAMP.

After installation WAMP should have automatically started itself. You can find the WAMP manger down by the clock. It looks like this.

You can now configure every aspect of your local server. Click on localhost to launch the starter home page. This will be replaced shortly by your WordPress installation files.

You will see Show Admin Bar with a check box option that allows you to view the admin bar when viewing site (default) or show admin bar in the dashboard. The rest is self explanitory. Uncheck view when viewing site. That’s it. If this post has been helpful show some love by commenting below.

How often should you back up?

That question depends on how often you blog or add content to your pages. For most sites that update content monthly I suggest backing up the database and wp files monthly. If you only blog ocassionally, you can probably get by with backing up quarterly. You just have to ask yourself, “Self, how much time do I have invested in this content? and what if I lost it all and had to begin again?” If neither of those questions bother you, just pick a different post to read. Backing up your site should be a priority.

What should I back up

You should back up 2 major things. Your database and your content files. That’s pretty much everything that runs your site. If you don’t attach images, and files to your post you can get away with just backing up your database, your plugins and your wordpress theme. If you have a database, plugins and wordpress theme folder, you can most likely get your site back up and running easily, then you would need your upload files, that are located in the WP-Content folder to get everything functional. You can always download the newest version of WP, connect your database, update your database, and more than likely smoothly be back up and running.

How many wordpress backups should I keep?

This question is an easy one, keep at least 2, if not more of all your wordpress files, and a copy of your wordpress database. Why 2 or more? Say you only have one backup and your database is corrupt? Your pretty much screwed! So why not up your chances of recovery by having at least 2 complete backups?

So how do I back up my wordpress website??

Learn how to completely backup a wordpress installation and database in less than 15 min

Go to the plugin tab and search for “wp backup”

Next click on “install Now” button beside wp backup

Confirm that you in fact do want to install this plugin. Click OK

Next You will now see the plugin installing

After the wp backup plugin is installed, it will ask you if you want to activate it. Click activate plugin. The plugin is now active and ready to use.

Click on the tools menu and you will see backup

Click on the backup button and you will see the options of the backup plugin.

This part is simple, scroll down about half way and you will see, backup options. Select download to your computer and click on the back up button.

Now save the database file to your computer

I suggest creating a folder titled “WEBSITE BACKUP FOLDER – DATE” and then saving the database backup file into that folder.

Next we make a backup of all of our wordpress files

To complete this step you will need the folowing infromation.
1. Download An FTP program such as Filezilla
2. your user credentials to access your website files via FTP.
If you don’t know your FTP credentials contact your web host and they will help you out with step 2.

Next we make a backup of all of our wordpress files

Configure your FTP program with your hostname, username and password, then click connect.

Copy your site to your “WEBSITE BACKUP FOLDER”

FTP is simple, everything on the left side of the screen is your local computer, everything on the right is files on your server. In the left pannel navigate to your “WEBSIte BACKUP FOLDER” then in the right panel select all the file by clicking on one file then pressing the CTRL A button on your keyboard this will select all the files on the sever side. Next right click on the server side, you will see DOWNLOAD.. Thats it click it and sit back and watch all your files copy. This could take from 5 minutes to more than an hour. It all depends on how many files you have on your server. If your blog is packed with tons of images, it will take longer.

I hope this tutorial has been educational for you. If it has helped you learn how to backup your wordpress website, please share it with others. Feel free to comment below.

The front page

TilesDirect.net WordPress Website Designs by Hardin Marketing LLC

Backsplash Tiles Shopping Page (Sortable)

Managing Products is simple

Adding a product is easy with the Shopp Plugin integrated

Manage Blog Post

Client can easily Add / Remove Pages

If you like what you see above and are in need of web design contact us If you are a wordpress website designer looking to grow your skill set we also offer one on one wordpress training and coaching in Atlanta Hardin Marketing LLC is here to help you succeed at whatever your needs are.

As a Hardin Marketing Standard, we strip the admin media menu, admin links menu, admin appearance menu, admin plugins menu, admin users menu, admin tools menu, admin settings menu, and sometime the admin links menu.

We also replace the standard wordpress footer branding and replace with Custom built WordPress Solutions by Hardin Marketing LLC. We then add the following widget. This reminds the client who build the site for future upgrades, and it also lets them know that your appreciate their business.

You may also be familiar with this screen. Yep, its the wordpress admin login page.

We feel that the client’s custom built wordpress website should be fully branded to match the rest of the company.  Below is what the admin panel looks like now.

If your a wordpress designer and would like to learn new ways to make your wordpress websites more branded and custom, Hardin Marketing offers WordPress Website Design Training. Learn more about Hardin Marketing LLC WordPress Coaching Services.