WordPress Workshop

Day One

Link to slides

With LeeAnn Kinney / leeann.a.kinney@gmail.com

Schedule/Time frame for Day 1

  • Introductions
  • Introduction to WordPress
  • Fundamentals
  • Break for Lunch
  • Customizing
  • Plugins & Widgets

About Me

About You

  • Are you a certificate student?
  • What made you want to take this class and what do you hope to get out of it?
  • Do you have any experience or familiarity with WP?
  • What would you describe your coding level? (beginner, intermediate, advanced)
  • Do you have experience with PHP?

Why WordPress?

Why WordPress?

  • Free & open source
  • Contributers from all around the world
  • Easy to find help through forums
  • Awesome community

Why WordPress?

  • Speed: Get a site up and running very quickly
  • Simplicity: No coding skills needed
  • Collaboration: Can have multiple users & roles contributing to a site
  • Plugins: Plugins can help with anything from forms to SEO (search engine optimization)

Some examples

Wordpress.com vs. Wordpress.org

WordPress.com

  • Free but you will have to pay for premium features
  • Files are hosted
  • Domain will be websitename.wordpress.com
  • Very limited customization
  • Site will have ads unless you pay to remove
  • No plugins or custom code

Wordpress.com vs. Wordpress.org

WorPress.org

  • Free but you will have to pay for your own hosting
  • Domain doesn't have to contain wordpress
  • Unlimited customization

How it works

  • Content stored in database
  • PHP calls the content
  • HTML gives structure
  • CSS styles the pages

Installing WordPress

A hosting provider I like to use $5/month

Logging in

  • On the web: http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin
  • Locally: example: http://localhost:8080/wordpress/wp-admin

Let's install WordPress!

Touring the Dashboard

  • Can change what is displayed on admin page
  • General Settings
  • Site Title
  • Tagline
  • URL
  • Email
  • User role
  • WP University Cheat Sheet

Posts

  • All of your blog posts
  • May or may not use this depending on the type of site
  • Quick edits

Categories vs. Tags

Categories are higher level items that would be used on a regular basis

Tags more specific

One category, multiple tags

Category vs. Tag Examples

  • Recipes | Apple Pie
  • Cars | El Camino
  • Vacations | Hawaii
  • Shoes | Nike

Pages

  • Pages of the site that don't change often
  • Can appear as top level navigation items

Media

Stores all of your images, can manage edit and delete here.

Writing

Post-related settings

Reading

  • Set home page
  • Number of posts
  • Search engine indexing
  • RSS settings

Permalinks

Defines url structure

Comments

  • Discussion can manage comment settings
  • Can approve, delete, mark as spam
  • Probably want to keep on posts but remove from pages
  • If keeping comments, use a plugin like Akismet

Appearance

  • Themes
  • Widgets
  • Menu/navigation
  • Update logo or header
  • Other style updates depending on theme

Users

  • Contributor
    • Can write posts but can't publish
    • Will need an admin to approve & post
  • Author
    • Can write and publish
    • Can only publish own posts

Users

  • Editor
    • Can write and edit all posts
    • Can edit and post other users posts as well
  • Administrator
    • Can do it all!

Editor

Allows you to update files within dashboard. Very dangerous and will be disabled if site is hardened.

Security

WordPress sites are often targeted by hackers but there are many ways to secure your sites.

Security

During install

  • Good hosting provider
  • Don't use wp_ database prefix
  • Create new database user
  • Use a unique user name & password (not admin)

Security

After install

Security

Monitoring and protecting after site launch

  • Keep up with updates!
  • Use a service or plugin to scan your site
  • Firewalls
  • Backup your site often in the event you do get hacked

Widgets

  • Dynamic content areas
  • Often in footer or sidebar
  • Theme determines where they can be added

Menus

  • Set up the navigation for the site
  • Can have multiple
  • Common locations: header, sidebar, footer
  • Theme also determines available locations

Plugins

  • A piece of software you add to your site
  • Advanced features
  • Many are free
  • You can also build your own
  • Plugin listings

Plugins

Things to look for when choosing

  • Ratings
  • Is it being maintained?
  • Documentation
  • Can potentially break site

Themes

  • Install
  • Live Preview
  • Activate

Customizing Themes

  • Built-in options
  • Child Theme

Importing Content

Can import content from another site or export content if you want to move away from WP

Let's build it!

  • Choose a theme and install
  • Create at least 3 pages: About, Contact with Form and Blog
  • Create at least one post using a custom category and tags
  • Create a custom menu
  • Install at least 3 plugins
  • Add at least 1 custom widget to the page

Questions?