Blogging Tips

How To Upload Files To Your WordPress Blog

March 3, 2008 , 2 Shawn

Lately, I’ve received an email, she is one of my blog’s subscribers, and she asked me some questions about blogging. She said that she doesn’t know what is HTML and she doesn’t know how to upload files into her WordPress blog, for example, she doesn’t know how to insert the BlogRush widget into her blog. I’m not sure whether you know how to do this, what I’m sure is that if you are just a beginner blogger, most probably you don’t know how to do these tasks as well. However, don’t worry, because in this post, I’m going to teach you how, step by step, provided with the help of pictures, you can understand how it works even further. I hope that this is going to help you in your blogging journey. Let’s get started.

What is HTML?
To be frank with you, I myself are not very familiar with all the HTML codes, I just know the basics. The HTML codes are important for your website, but they are not the main thing that is going to make you rich. Therefore all you need is just to understand about it, understand the basic is enough. HTML is actually a computer language, all your websites are made up of HTML or maybe JAVA scripts.

Domain and hosting
Domain is the address of where your blog or website is located. It is just like the address of a physical shop, without it, no man can enter it. Once you have purchased a domain name, then you have to purchase hosting service that enable you to host your website, and in this case, to be able to host your blog. After you’ve done all these, installed your WordPress blog, you can then log in to your admin panel, and edit all the options there. For example, if you want to change your blog’s theme, there are only a few choices in default, and if you want more, you have to search from WordPress themes directory and download them to your computer. Next, you will need to upload the theme files which you have downloaded to your website by using FTP program. Of all the FTP programs, I used Filezilla, it is free to use, and you can download it from the net. Just search for it and download it if you don’t have any other FTP software. Here is the link to download in case you can’t find it.

Example how I insert BlogCatalog sidebar widget into my blog
A picture is worth a thousand words, so I will show you, step by step, how I insert the BlogCatalog sidebar widget into my blog, The Millionaire Secrets. First is of course you have to log in to your BlogCatalog account, and copy the code for the widget that you want to insert to your blog.

If you use WordPress, then just copy the code for WordPress. Next, you have to open your FTP program, and as for me, I’m using Filezilla to do this. Just log in to your Filezilla, then download the ‘sidebar’ HTML file from your blog.

Once you have logged in to your blog’s domain, you can see all the files that you have uploaded or installed in your blog. The right window is where all the files are located in your domain, or in other words, uploaded to your hosting server. While the window on the left shows all the files in your computer. So all you need to do now, is to download the ‘sidebar’ file from the server into your computer, so that you can paste the HTML code in it.

Here is what you should do, double-click and go into your ‘public_html’, ‘wp_content’, ‘themes’, then choose the themes folder which you want to change the file, and if you are using 3-column themes, you will have to download either the ‘lsidebar’ or the ‘rsidebar’. Download them both into your computer by drag-and-drop into your destination folder in the left window. And if you want to insert the BlogCatalog widget into the right sidebar of your blog, just open the ‘rsidebar’ HTML file with WordPad or NotePad.

After that, you need to paste the HTML code which you have copied into this file, just like this:

Where to paste the code will be depends on which part in the sidebar that you want that widget to show up. It is hard to explain this, you have to understand a little bit about HTML, or you have to use the trial-and-error method to figure this out. This is what I did last time, I tried many times until I get the right position of where I want the widget to show up. However, PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT YOU HAVE BACKUP all the files before you do so. Just backup all of the files that you have downloaded, in case if anything goes wrong, you can upload the backup files to your server again.

What you have to do is just to copy, then paste the code into your sidebar HTML file. What is the position, it is depends on where you want your widget to show up. For example, if you want the widget to show up in the bottom of your sidebar, just paste the code right before </ul> and </div>.

Once you have done all these, the final step is to save the file, and upload the file back to your blog server using Filezilla again. Upload it to the location where you download it, override the file. Everything is done, try to refresh your blog and you can see that the BlogCatalog widget will appear on your sidebar, just like below, cheers.

My suggestions
Remember, always make sure that you have BACKUP all of your original files before you change any codes. In case if anything goes wrong, you still have the backup file to help you restore your blog back to original. Another thing I want to tell you is this, all of these are easy to do. Trust me, once you understand how it works, it will be easy for you. So don’t be afraid the first time you see all the codes that you don’t understand how it works.

Another piece of advice from me, try to search from the net, I’m sure you can find other explanation how to do this, maybe even better explanation than here. Remember this, the first step is the heaviest step and the most crucial step to take. Once you take the first step, all other steps will follow. And it is not difficult, it is easy. It is difficult for you before you are not familiar with it. Hence, try to spend some time in it and play with it. There is risk because you don’t have knowledge in it, you are not familiar with it. Just like Michael Schumacher, he can drive so fast is because he is trained. However, it will be different for you, you are not trained, and if you drive at that speed, you are going to crash. That is why I keep on saying it is difficult because you are not familiar with it, you don’t have the knowledge. I hope that you can understand how it works from now on.