Two-Column PLRSiteBuilder Template

I’ve made a two-column template similar to the one I’ve been using with sites like All About CRM available in the updates area for PLRSiteBuilder customers. If you’re on the mailing list, you’ll have gotten a message with instructions on how to access it as well as how to download PLRSiteBuilder 1.2.3, the latest version.

The template is essentially an empty input folder. Create a new PLRSiteBuilder project and copy the contents of this template into your input folder. It will replace the index.txt, about.txt, etc. That’s fine. You’ll want to make a few changes:

  • Change the title and the opening paragraph of index.txt, about.txt and articles.txt.
  • Note that the privacy policy has been melded into about.txt and is now AdSense-compliant per the new rules.
  • If you want to vary how many articles you want displayed in the left-hand column, edit the ss-left.php file.
  • The page width is set to 785 pixels, the exact value for PLRPro header images. But there’s no image included, you’ll have to add one to the input folder and make sure the background image for the header is set correctly. You may have to delete ss-header.php entirely and let PLRSiteBuilder regenerate it if you want the site name and site description to show up.
  • Edit the ss-footer.php file to adjust the copyright message and such. Or (probably simplest) just delete it and let PLRSiteBuilder regenerate it for you. You’ll probably want to edit it, though, to add a link to the articles page.

The main features of this template are:

  • A random set of articles listed in the left column.
  • Three random article descriptions added to the bottom of each article.
  • A separate articles page listing all the articles.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment here. Thanks!

PLRSiteBuilder and PLRPro: A Great Combo

PLRPro is one of the best PLR (private label rights) membership sites. It’s not cheap — the regular fee is $97/month (but you can try it for 14 days for only $1 — which you should definitely do) — but the content you get is high quality, is provided in multiple languages, and has limited distribution. Here’s how you can use PLRSiteBuilder and content from PLRPro to build high-quality sites like this bankruptcy site. With only some minimal editing you can create and deploy a new site using PLRPro content in literally five or ten minutes. (You should, of course, spend some time editing and changing the content, but if you really want to get started super-fast, you can do it.) The instructions here apply to PLRSiteBuilder version 1.2.3 or higher.

Step 1: Download the PLRPro Content

Log into your PLRPro account (remember — it only costs $1 to try it for 2 weeks, I recommend that every PLRSiteBuilder customer try it), then browse through the sets of PLR content available. Choose one to download and extract it onto your hard disk somewhere. For the purposes of this example, we’re going to download the bankruptcy.zip file, which is one of the content bundles available to me in my PLRPro account. I unzip it to a folder called c:\bankruptcy\plr.

If you look inside c:\bankruptcy\plr you’ll see that the content consists of 40 articles about bankruptcy. Each article is available in HTML, text and Microsoft Word formats in these separate subfolders:

  • Articles-HTML-Version
  • Articles-TXT-Version
  • Articles-Word-Version

The articles are also available in multiple languages in separate subfolders — HTML, text and Word formats for each as well. A header image is also provided in the Graphics subfolder. Keyword and affiliate information is also provided in spreadsheet format.

Step 2: Choose Your Domain Name

We’ll assume that you have an appropriate domain name and web hosting setup, or can easily set it up. For our example, the domain is HowToBankrupt.com. I use ResellerZoom for a lot of hosting, you can get a very cheap account there for only $7/month to host dozens of sites for one flat rate.

Step 3: Prepare the PLRSiteBuilder Project

The folder c:\bankruptcy is going to be our main project folder. We’ve already placed the original PLR under the plr subfolder. Start PLRSiteBuilder and specify a name, description and domain for your project. Make the input folder a “sibling” folder to the plr subfolder. In my case, I’m using c:\bankruptcy\content as my input folder, and c:\bankruptcy\site as my output folder. I find it convenient to have everything about a site under one folder. Once your initial site settings have been defined, be sure to save the project before doing anything else. In my case, the project is saved as the file c:\bankruptcy\howtobankrupt.plrsb. (PLRSiteBuilder doesn’t currently care what name you call a project file, nor where you put it, but by convention I always end mine in a “.plrsb” extension and place them in the main project folder so I can always find them!)

Step 4: Copy the PLR Content

Now you need to copy the PLRPro content into the input folder. Your first thought is to use the content in the Articles-TXT-Version folder, but there’s a better way to do it. Instead of using the text files, use the Microsoft Word files: copy all the .DOC files in the Articles-Word-Version folder into your input folder.

Remember, PLRSiteBuilder automatically converts .doc files to .txt files as part of the site building process. Even better, it will do some transformations on the content as part of the conversion process. Specifically, it will:

  • Wrap the text to 60 columns per line.
  • Automatically wrap article headings with <h2> tags.
  • Generate a random publication offset.

That’s why you should use the Word files and not the text files.

It’s easy: just copy the .DOC files into the input folder and generate the site. PLRSiteBuilder will create .txt files for each Word file. (Delete the Word files after, because they’ll be ignored in favor of the .txt files.)

Step 5: Set the Header

We’re almost done, all we need to do now is integrate the image provided by PLRPro into our site. Go to the Page Layout tab and click on the Edit button for the header. In the resulting dialog, make sure that Use this background image is checked and type the name bankrupt.jpg into the corresponding text field. Now go back and copy the bankruptcy.jpg file from the PLRPro Graphics folder into the input folder.

One final tweak: edit the styles.css file and changed the width of the #page element to 785px, since the header provided by PLRPro is 785 pixels wide.

You’re done! Regenerate the site and test it out.

Of course, you’ll want to tweak the site according to your own style, but the hard lifting is done.

P.S.: As you can see, I’ve noodled with the layout of the bankruptcy site. You have to change the configuration by hand right now, but PLRSiteBuilder will shortly create those types of sites right out of the box.

The PLRSiteBuilder Blog Is Live!

Yes, I’ve finally gotten around to creating a blog to support PLRSiteBuilder customers! Things are a bit rough yet, as I’m just using the default theme for now, so don’t expect the current look and feel to be permanent. But I look forward to hearing your comments and answering your questions.