About WordPress
- CMS: HTML+CSS+JS (front) PHP+MYSQL (back)
- 27% of the internet
- All kinds of uses
- Free software
What is free software and why it is important
- 4 Freedoms
- Democratize web publishing
- Own your content
- Community: transparency: security
- Anyone can help (forums, translations) > Sign up on www.WordPress.org today!
WordPress.org VS WordPress.com
The free software VS the service. WP.com advantages:
- Easy to setup
- Free
- Secure, fast, escalable no maintanance
- Great for a basic website, blog or porfolio
- Can be migrated to wp.com easily (La Bagatela went both ways)
When to go for WP.org (self hosted)
- Specific usages (ecommerce, forums)
- Specific plugins or themes
- Fine tuning
- Detailed metrics
Why learn WordPress anyway?
- Create and update your own portfolio or blog
- Manage a bigger website (The Newyorker, Voge) . See showcase here.
- A “bridge drug” to learn coding and start building serious websites
Until a couple of years ago I used WordPress beacuse it was easier for me, clients didnt now what it was, althought they were happy to use it. Now a days I get requests specifically for WP sites, sometimes from scratch, sometimes to revamp existing ones.
Born for blogs but it can handle anything
Blogs is what it does best (wether it is a personal blog or a multi-user magazine with dozens of news a day) but there are examples of other things you can build with it:
- Ecommerce
- Porfolios
- Intranets
- School/University management
- CRM
Examples on WordPress.com:
- Author´s page https://pablonacach.wordpress.com
- Writer´s Club https://otramaneradeleer.wordpress.com
- Reservations page https://bilbozaharrekolagunak.wordpress.com
- Community Center https://labagatelavive.wordpress.com
- Wedding Planner https://lahiruela18dejunio.wordpress.com
- Comics (Panel Theme) https://wordpress.com/themes/panel/
- Rooms (Stay Theme) https://wordpress.com/themes/stay/
Let´s start! Practice for today
- Sign up at WordPress.com
- Add me (mrfoxtalbot) as Administrator (Users > Invite) so I can help you.
- Create a number of pages and add content (text & galleries) to each.
- Add those pages to the menu
- Setup widgets
Creating and editing Posts
- The post, date, status, author, categories.
- Difference between posts and pages (static VS dynamic, taxonomies, URLs, listings, hierarchy)
- Featured Images
- Categories VS Tags
- A post can be many things (Portfolio, product, order, menu…)
- Visual VS Text
- Using Headings correctly
- Images (sizes, alignment, links)
- Galleries (target: file)
- Adding links
- Embedding external objects (Videos, Maps, Tweets, Gists)
- The “Read More” Tag
- Revisions
- Bulk editing
- Comments
- Setting the homepage
Organizing Posts & Pages: The Menus
- Type of menu elements
- Adding positions
- Arranging hierarchically
- “Social” menus
Reusable blocks: The Widgets
- Types of Widgers
- Identifying areas
- Visibility
Make it pretty: The Themes
- Change aspect, not content
- Re-assign Menus & Widgets
- Use the customizer (Appearance > Customizer)
- A note on free themes & pluigins (never pirate them!)
Theme options: The “Customizer” is your friend
- Clicking on elements to edit them
- Preview changes
- Fonts
- Color options
- Headers
- Favicon
- Mobile & Tablet versions
Homework for next week
- I will add you all as administrator for this website I made today in 1 hour so you can see how is is setup internally: https://iedwp.wordpress.com. Please leave a comment on this post so I know your usernames.
- Go through “Themes” and find one that you like so we can use it on the next class
- Consider a domain name for your site (so it is www.yoursite.com instead of www.yoursite.wordpress.com) and look it up here to see if it´s available, but dont buy it, we will sew how to do it on the next class (the cost is 2$/month)
