WordPress Blogs 101

Editor's Notes

1. How long we’ve been doing it, where we’ve been. Moveable type etc. Predates me, maybe eight years Four years ago made the move over to WordPress
2. Time to ask: any experience? Just learning? Knowledge levels?
3. Blogs can highlight specific topics. Fully integrate your social media with “share” buttons and twitter feeds.
4. Research Projects
5. Academic Projects, Google Map integration, custom fields.
6. Things to use it for. Outreach to specific audiences. They have subscribers!
7. “Blog” is too limiting a term. Can manage any kind of content any way. For an affiliated organization.
8. Including outside scholarly organizations.
9. Mirror and enhance printed publications
10. Publications, featured articles, rotating images, full downloads
11. Highlighting events, with schedules, application forms, document repositories.
12. Class assignments.
13. Galleries. Easy integration with images, video and audio.
14. They don’t even have to look like blogs. The can look like a comic book. This informational site features a calendar, RSS feeds.
15. This doesn’t look anything like a blog, but we can build it anyway.
16. Departments and administrative functions.
17. OTHER THINGS A BLOG CAN EASILY HANDLE Calendars, forms, gallery widgets, embedded audio, video. We’ll cover some of this on Thursday.
18. Start by logging in at the URL shown
19. This is the Dashboard. From here you’ll manage everything you need to do on your site. Point out collapsible sections on left.
20. If you have several sites, you can shortcut to them here.
21. Shortcuts for adding new things. Also, comment management and logging out.
22. If you don’t see something that you think you should, try the screen options
23. Posts panel. Manage your posts, add new ones, categories and tags. Managing pages is the same.
24. FAQ.
25. Make a brief bio page. Can be 1 paragraph about what you had for breakfast.
26. Something like this.
27. There are a few quick ways of grabbing an image. Drag-and-drop can be easy Do it in groups too Use a file you’ve uploaded before from your gallery I’ll just select a file. Uploading happens automatically.
28. Progress bar, then options for inserting the image. I’ll pick left, medium, Insert into page. Another way to do it is to put your cursor where you want an image to be in the post, and drag-and-drop it from your desktop.
29. Now it looks like this. I can save a draft, schedule it, password protect it, delete it, set a featured image (if your theme supports it). Click the “Preview” button.
30. Adding posts works the same way, but with a few additional important items.
31. Categories, featured images (if supported, but good to do anyway) Stickiness. Delayed publishing. Password-protection.
32. Post formats can be helpful. Many themes come with custom types built-in. Tags. excerpts, custom fields, discussion settings, slug (pretty URL), author.
33. Formatting hell. Excel is even worse, but there’s a “Table Press” plugin to make it work better.
34. A new feature with version 3.9 is “Distraction-Free editing.” It removes all the sidebars and other options so that you can just focus on what you’re writing. Content is still king.
35. Easy as 1,2,3. One, find your video on YouTube, Vimeo or a number of other video-hosting sites.
36. Two, Click on Share and copy the link.
37. Three, paste it into your post on a single line. Short videos some formats, and audio clips, can be uploaded using the Add Media button
38. Preview
39. Save your work. Wait. Switch over to browser tab here.
40. The point of a CMS is cross-indexing automatically.
41. You can also add media for other purposes such as banners or backgrounds, or just to hold media items until you’re ready to use them. If you’re on-the-go…mobile app
42. You can accommodate a lot of “metadata” along the way. But depending on your theme, they may or may not be displayed. Still, good for your own organization because you can find things later. Grab Link URL, titles, alt-text (for hovering), captions, descriptions. Can be searchable, with the right plug-in.
43. Major Options Out of the box, these are set up by default. But you can change your Site Title (don’t leave it blank!) and tagline (blank if you want), set the timezone to the nearest big city so DST is adjusted, date formats etc.
44. If you use a static home page, be sure “blog” page exists. It should be blank. How many posts to show – especially important in cases where your layout is showing a grid that you want to be even. Comments rules – most comments are spam. Different moderation settings New plugins make automated spam less of a problem.
45. Permalinks are important for SEO If you have a very specific kind of layout planned, work with the media settings, particularly thumbnail sizes.
46. Comments show up in black bar. Administrators are usually notified. May be held “pending.” If comments aren’t caught immediately, check to see that they’re legitimate before approving them. Always mark them as spam – the system learns. Explain these. Notice the different kinds of almost-legitimate-sounding compliments and suggestions. URLs as names, URLs for commercial sites, slightly off-sounding names, comments on very old posts.
47. Built in, under the WP Touch Pro menu. There are a few themes to choose from. These are two of them.
48. These are the others.
49. A little about WP wordpress.org Has lots of tutorials, support and other information.
50. Really, not just for blogs
51. Now that we’ve got some material in place. Themes Widgets and Plug-ins Menus
52. So you know what we’re talking about: Header, banner, menu, body 2 columns, widgets
53. Meta, navigation, footer widgets.
54. Stress that you need to pick the right theme. Easier to change the look of a theme than to add functionality that just isn’t there. There are specialized themes for photographers, portfolios, writers and journalists, publications, general bloggers, gamers, events and more. There’s a well-established industry of “premium” theme developers. $35 - $200 for added functionality, finesse and polish, support.
55. The first stop. Shortcuts to some customizations, preview others. This is our set, options to add more. Not every theme does everything you want. Don’t fall in love. This one lets you change widgets (2 widget areas), menus (three menu areas), headline color and the header image. Some have complex “builder” areas to create complex page layouts. A lot of them don’t look like anything until you get into the customization part.
56. The theme previews are only a start. Notice the gaps – missing widget areas in particular. Also, menus, slideshows and other features custom to that theme need to be configured. Don’t worry – they’ll stay stored if you want to switch back.
57. Like the popular Divi theme. Looks like “meh” right out of the box.
58. Full-width slider Fly-in logos Colorful icons in columns Image portfolios Parallax background Bios Whatever. All customizable in countless ways.
59. Way down into the rabbit hole with Suffusion, where virtually every aspect of the look-and-feel plus functionality can be customized. This one is powerful but not as intuitive. But also, less prone to break if you change themes. 19 color schemes, different icons sets, 1-2-3 column layouts, Google fonts, a slideshow, 14-19 widget areas, two menu areas, breadcrumbs, bylines, custom javascript and css, and multiple content-type templates.
60. Change a theme, then preview.
61. Under Appearance::Widgets.
62. Notice how these correspond
63. Version 3.9 introduced in-place widget configuration from the Theme Customizer area.
64. Where you hang content If you don’t add any, the default set takes over. Search, archives, “meta” block Not just sidebars; some themes have them in the headers and footers too. Others let you “widgetize” blocks within a page or post.
65. Don’t forget to configure them.
66. Under Appearance::Menus Not usually helpful in a site of any complexity.
67. Start by creating one, giving it a name. Then add components. Pages, custom links, “magic” categories page, etc. Check, Add, drag and drop, save. Have a volunteer gather everyone’s “About” Pages
68. If more than one location is available, you can do this. Here is a theme that supports two menus – one at the top edge, another below the masthead.
69. All Google can index is your text. It will gather metadata about your images, but how they’re found derives from text. Write a lot, make it interesting, get linked, avoid spam, stay secure.
70. Blogs.shu.edu, click the link indicated.
71. Top ten sites according to Wikipedia. Chinese search engines and social media sites are here.
72. Other sites in the top 100 Sports news Social media Shopping Photo sharing
73. In all its glory, unchanged since it was launched in 1996.
74. Amazing how much of this code is no longer in use.
75. Thanks to Heidi, colleagues at TLTC. Questions?