The easiest way to do it is using cPanel control panel. If your host has this control panel it’s follow the instructions. If your host does not provide cPanel contact me and I’ll get you fixed up. As always, I’m At Your Servers at Gmail. 

Issues: Installing a new WordPress theme is a low impact process and at the most you may have a compatibility problem later if an update includes functions the custom theme does not support. In that very rare case you can revert back to the stock theme while you get a new custom one — or have it adapted for you.

Make sure you get your theme from a reputable site! There are many sites out there that do a shabby job of theme building and are only providing free themes so they can embed links in them to monetize your traffic — or worse. So use the WordPress theme directory or some other mainstream site to make sure it’s safe to download your dream theme.

Once you have acquired the zip file, upload it into your hosting storage area using the cPanel control panel. I recommend using the ‘File Manager’ feature of your control panel instead of an FTP client because the control panel application will unpack the zip file for you making theme installation virtually effortless.

Ready to rock? Let’s get started. Step by Step…

Open your cPanel and select the File Manager application icon.  This will pop a new window showing your site files. *** Navigation: Click on a folder or file’s icon to open it. Click on the name to perform operations on it. ***

1. Navigate to the proper directory (by clicking folder icons) into public_html, then wp-content, then themes.
2. Then use the ‘Upload File” link to upload your new theme ZIP file.
3. Once it is uploaded navigate “Up one level” and then get back into themes and you’ll see you zip file there. Click on the zip file and note that on the top right of your browser you’ll see some file manipulation options now become visible, e.g., ‘Show File’, Edit File, ‘Extract File’, etc.
4. With the zip file selected, click on the Extract File Contents link to unpack the file. This will pop a new window and unzip everything for you. It only takes a second and when it’s done you can close that new window.
5. Now if you go up a level and then back down you’ll see the new theme folder installed and ready to go. That is all you need to do in the file manager and you can get out of it.
6. Next, log into your Word Press as the admin. Go to the design section and you’ll see the new theme there. Click on the new theme to make it the site theme. Then view your site in a browser and the new theme is installed.

That was easy! Try this out and install your own custom WordPress theme. Having fun yet? Next time we can talk about customizing the theme. — Dwayne

So needless to say I got very excited when we stumbled across the Eden Hosted Content Management System. At it’s core, Eden is a sharp Web 2 style site builder platform with true on-page editing (better than WYSIWYG since you edit on the page and see what your visitors see). It is also designed to allow the beginner to be creative with easy tools and built-in guidance.

Since Eden is a hosted platform you create and host the site on their servers. While this might not appeal to some, the fact that the platform is always being upgraded and improved is a real plus.

A quick visit to their samples page shows some of the top notch design aspects you can experiment with in the design process.

Going beyond the builder you’ll also find really cool SEO features that seem perfectly targeted to the small business website manager. You’ll love their easy to follow communications and promotions segments that offer the usual forms and segmentation tools but with a fresh new-web approach that does not feel like your building a cookie cutter site.

So all in all Eden and the Preation experience is something we would recommend to clients. The price is certainly fair — starting as low and $10 per month. Their per-page-view pricing model might raise an eyebrow but when you consider this includes hosting, basic SEO, localization and marketing in one platform, Eden is a steal for the average business owner.

Still not convinced? Did I mention they have a 15 day Website CMS Free Trial so you can drive Eden around before you decide.

Write in and let me know what you think of Eden.

Of course we go around the block with them as they try to publish those files directly to their site, or worse yet, they try to use the built in converter in MS Office – YUCK. Once we clean that mess up we have to manually convert them to PDF or Flash (for presentations) then publish them as embedded links.

Now we have new solutions to work with and recommend. About a year ago we stumbled onto a great document converting, hosting, and embedding service and wanted to share it with you.

I want to recommend to you one of the best way to convert, host, and embed documents into your website. As you may know a large part of our expertise is focused on SEO and website promotion. With that in mind we always try to recommend solutions that take the promotion of your website into consideration. That way you can climb the SERPS (search results) as quickly as possible without spending too much money to do it.

With that said I want to recommend a free web2 enhanced document service called Scribd. (scribd.com)
You can sign up for a free account there and use scribd for several critical services to enhance your website and your sites search authority.

Scribd gives you a free way to convert word docs into pdf presentations. In fact it will convert word, pdf, powerpoint, etc into embedded presentations that you can embed right into your website or wordpress blog — the same way you embed videos. Not only does it provide the conversion and embeds, but it also provides you with hosting for the document on their website that provides links back to your website. (This is perhaps the greatest benefit of all because scribd is a very high ranking website, if you have links on it to your site it will help your site gain authority and rank very quickly.)

Hope this tip helps. Drop us a line and let us know where you use it.