Welcome to WordPress 101

1. Welcome to WordPress 101 The Internet Standard for Content Management. - Derek Feagin of Tree Frog Development

2. Tree Frog Development Derek Feagin Tammy Feagin Sarah Schacher Shannon Feagin Derek Bierman Agenda WordPress History and Statistics Anatomy of a WordPress Site Logging into the Dashboard Admin Bar Posts, Media, Links, Pages, Appearance, Plugins, Users, Tools, Settings Theme Discussion Theme Customization Updating WordPress and Plugins Backing Up Your WordPress Site Search Engine Optimization

3. WordPress History WordPress is used by 61% off all websites whose CMS platform is known 84% WordPress sites are on version 3.x 15% WordPress sites are on version 4.x WordPress is used by more than 22% of the top 10 million websites as of August 2013 WordPress was first released on May 27, 2003 WordPress is built on MySQL and PHP (both open source products) 76.4 million site depend on WordPress There are 40 translations of WordPress 6 new WordPress posts are published every second 29,000 WordPress plugins and growing daily

4. WordPress Architecture (server stack)

5. WordPress Architecture (server stack)

6. WordPress Architecture (File Structure)

7. WordPress Dashboard Your URL + /wp-admin or Your URL + /wp-login.php Dashboard screen (screen options) Admin bar Help (context aware) General navigation between main site and admin area Note commonality in each section of how it works WordPress > About (get version and details) WordPress > Other options link out to WordPress.org - WordPress.com is a blogging platform

8. Posts WordPress really started as a blogging platform. Ex. http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu RSS – Really Simple Syndication A machine readable format that allows for easy sharing of content with other sites http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/rss?containerid=13 http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Feeds Example: http://mashable.com/ http://mashable.com/rss

9. Media Library Check out Settings > Media Note image sizes Note file/folder organization Uploading image, other files Show how to get the URL to the image/file - Note can’t overwrite existing items so if you want to replace an item with the same name you would need to delete the original item then upload the new version (of course depends on file/folder organization setting above)

10. Pages Trash & renaming Renaming page vs renaming URL Revisions Visibility Parent Template Help Visual/Text tabs AutoSave Inserting Images (spacing and alignment) Auto links larger version (you may want to remove the link) No space next to image padding-top: 15px; padding-right: 15px; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 15px; Or style=“padding: 0px 15px 15px 0px;” http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_padding.asp style=“float: left;” http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_align.asp

11. Pages: Forms Contact Form 7 is one of the top 5 most popular plugins out there. It does do a lot of stuff but there is a bit of overhead to making it all work. Another option would be a third party service like: Wufoo(http://rwhvac.com/contact-us/) or Email Me From (http://columbussalespavilion.com/sale-forms/consignor-owner-certificate/)

12. Pages: [Shortcodes] What is a shortcode? A shortcode is a WordPress-specific code that lets you do nifty things with very little effort. Shortcodes can embed files or create objects that would normally require lots of complicated, ugly code in just one line. Shortcode = shortcut. Video http://codex.wordpress.org/Video_Shortcode Audio http://en.support.wordpress.com/?s=audio+shortcode http://codex.wordpress.org/Audio_Shortcode Listings of Shortcodes available on WordPress.com http://en.support.wordpress.com/shortcodes/ (50) http://codex.wordpress.org/Shortcode_API (7)

13. Comments General rule for most of our sites since they are web sites are not really being ran as blogs we just shut these off across the site using the plugin “Disable Comments”

14. Appearance Appearance > Customize is specifically customizing the look of your theme Often there is also a menu called something like:Appearance > Theme Options Widgets are pieces of functionality that you can add to widget areas. Widget areas are commonly sidebar areas and footer areas. You can dynamically display sidebar content for specific pages/areas of your site using special plugins

15. Plugins Search plugins - https://wordpress.org/plugins/ also via your WordPress installation (nice interface with WordPress 4.0) Walk through the installation of a plugin Pay attention to changes that happen when you install a plugin As a general rule if you want to do there is a plugin for it. The downside is you just have to research and test everything! Here are some of the things to look at and consider when picking a plugin: Access the plugin page on WordPress.org and view the last updated date, compatible versions of WP, # of downloads and star rating. I would also suggest checking out searching for the specific plugin name on YouTube and see what kind of help videos are out there.

16. Users This is where all user accounts are managed for the site. If the site is providing content specific to some higher level members all of those users need to have accounts here. You can choose to allow visitors to register on the site under Settings > General > Membership You can also set the default user role for any users you are going to create under Settings > General > New User Default Role

17. Tools Sometimes you need to import or export content into your site and this is the area you would visit to do that. As a general rule you will not be in this area. Sometimes your theme or other plugins will add items into this menu area.

18. Settings These are the general settings for WordPress over all regardless of the theme that you have chosen. Sometimes your theme or other plugins will add items into this menu area.

19. Additional Items Good chance that your theme also came with some additional content types that you will see on the left side of your admin window. These additional areas may have come with the theme or with an installed plugin. Some things you might see are things like: Links, Portfolios, Galleries, Layer Sliders, Testimonials, Events, Analytics, SEO, Products, etc. There are a myriad of plugins (33,376) for WordPress and they all come with some level of additional functionality. Some do small tasks like removing the word “Howdy” (Remove Howdy) next to the name of who is logged in all the way up to full scale commerce solutions like WooCommerce.

20. Discussion Points Discuss issues with installing plugins (ex. “Shortcode Reference”) Discuss issues with upgrading plugins Discuss issues with upgrading WordPress - Functionality will be updated. This is normally a good thing but there could always be an unexpected effect Discuss Issues with upgrading themes - If certain items have been tweaked during the initial configuration of your site like, php pages, css files, or js files there is a chance that upgrading your theme will overwrite those changes Discuss interactions between themes and plugins Web site guidelines / content / content frequency / blogging

21. Tweaking Out Your Theme If you cant seem to make the adjustment that you want to in the standard interface that the plugin, the theme options, or the general WordPress environment then you have to resort to making changes at deeper levels in the system. This is when you start editing css, js, and php pages. Before you would jump to this level for a interface update I would suggest using the developer tools in IE, Chrome, Firefox, or web inspector in Safari Brief demo This may be the appropriate time to consult a professional when you are digging in at this level 

22. Working with Images Crop and size the image to the largest size you are planning to use on the site before you upload it WordPress comes with some built in image editing functionality but our suggestion would be to prep your images before bringing them into WordPress If you have someone available to you with a skillset for working with images take advantage of that. There are numerous issues when it comes to working with images. This is an area that I have intentionally stayed away from for the most part. I know how to do basic resizing and cropping.

23. Backing Up WordPress We are currently backing up all of our WordPress sites except for 1 (WordPress needs to be updated on this site) using the BackWPup plugin. This allows us to get a nightly backup of the site. A copy of the database content and files are FTPed to a different server than where WordPress is currently running. We retain the last 15 days of backups as well as the last 15 weekly backups. If you want to backup your WordPress environment to another location you can do that using the plugin that we currently have installed or you could backup your site using a different plugin. I believe that the VaultPress plugin is one of the most popular backup & security scanning plugins. Plans start at $5/mo. Plugin - https://wordpress.org/plugins/vaultpress/ VaultPress site - https://vaultpress.com/

24. Search Engine Optimization This is a huge topic all on its own. I would like to see how much interest there is here and see if maybe we want to have a session entirely devoted to SEO. WordPress out of the box does some nice things SEO wise. The way that it names pages is a great help for search engine discovery but there is a lot more to it than that. Content / Page titles / Content / Domain name / Content Think like a customer – what are they putting as search words into Google to locate you or one of your competitors Investigate the sites that are ranked higher than you in the engines

25. Theme Specific Questions? Q&A time for any questions specifically about your theme or any other questions that you might have.

26. Thanks for Coming! WordPress is a great tool with tons of potential but there is a learning curve to the platform as well as any additional functionality that you add to it. WordPress