1. Unzip/unpack your theme files.

2. Access your site with an FTP client.

3. Upload all theme files into the theme directory of your site, usually… www/wp-content/themes.

4. On your server, open the directory in the theme titled /plugins.

5. Move these files (1 folder and 1 file) into the plugins directory of your site, usually www/wp-content/plugins.

6. In your administration panel, go to Design and choose The Ministry Theme as your theme.

7. In your administration panel, go to Plugins and enable the 2 plugins called WPListCal (optional, but it offers a nice and easy event management tool) and Limit Posts.

That’s it. Just make sure to replace the logo – you can use our cross emblem but you’ll need some kind of graphics program to overwrite the name.

Under Settings…

1. We change the site and blog url’s to include from http://yourdomain.com to http://www.yourdomain.com so that it will be more compatible with many linking and directory sites. WordPress handles redirects well either way, but we like the standard www., especially since it’s probably on your business card!

2. We change the server time to reflect the local time. For us, it’s usually -6, which means that our site’s server time will be adjusted six hours behind the Greenwich meantime or, Central Standard Time.

3. We set the first day of the week to Sunday. It’s rare to see the old post calendar in a sidebar anymore, but just in case, we like Sundays!

4. We change the permalink structure. Most of the time we go with the day and name based url’s as opposed to the ?=# structure. This is important for search engines and offers a practical and nice way to catalog content by date. There are other options, but be careful to watch out for certain file names in WordPress’ system. Always have /%something%/%postname% rather than just the postname.

5. We set up certain helpful plugins. Among the standard for us:

• WP Super Cache, which creates static html versions of your pages to speed up load time.
• WP Stats, for great stats tracking (you’ll need an account at WordPress.com with an API Key).
• The All-in-One SEO Pack, which allows you to easily change the titles of pages and posts, and also allows you to “noindex” your tag, category, and archive pages. This all helps with your search engine rankings.
• XML Google Sitemaps, which creates a sitemap for Google. Sometimes we also link to it from the frontpage, but the great advantage is that the plugin submits your site to Google upon each update.
• Akismet, which filters out spam comments, which can really be harmful on a church or ministry site.

There are others we find extremely beneficial depending on the site we’re working on and we’ll blog about those on this site, but these are the plugins we consider essential.

1. Log into your domain’s control panel, usually at www.yourdomain.com/cpanel.

2. Scroll down until you see Fantastico and click it.

3. Select WordPress in the left sidebar and follow the on screen instructions for the installation process.

Other hosting providers often have fast install methods as well, but cPanel is one of the most common. If you don’t have or want to use Fantastico’s single-click install, WordPress is still extremely easy to install.

Begin by Downloading WordPress…

Then follow WordPress’ handy 5-minute install guide.

We’re directing you there because the instructions may change a bit over time. If you need help with the install, contact us. We offer WordPress installation for a $45 charge on servers already equipped with PHP, and $75 if you need the base LAMP software installed as well. But really, you can do this!