Part 1: Learn the Lingo

WORDPRESS FOR GENEALOGISTS

June 18, 2012 taneya@gmail.com

www.facebook.com/taneyawww.twitter.com/taneya

Part 1: Learn the Lingo Basic familiarity with WordPress, how it works, the terminology

used, WordPress.com

Part 2: Dissecting the Dashboard – June 25th Delve further into the WordPress Dashboard - all the parts are

and what they do; begin to understand the self-hosted version of WordPress.

Part 3: Features, Features & More Features – July 9th plugins & themes - how to find them, how to choose them; DOs

and DON’Ts; commonly seen in genealogy. 

Part 4: Polishing to Perfection – July 16th more advanced - how to tweak themes, maintenance issues,

site analytics

WEBINAR SERIES

Background & WordPress Fundamentals

Using WordPress Hands On: Creating a WordPress.com site

Questions & Discussion

OVERVIEW

BACKGROUND & FUNDAMENTALS

My Journey1999 - basic HTML; created my fi rst website

2003  - transitioned to TypePad  -- early blogging software; the appeal for me was that I could make frequent updates and not have to code HTML to do it. Paid a monthly fee.

2004 - Blogger - free Google product 2007 - WordPress;  made the switch

because WordPress off ered more functionality than blogger; ability to choose more designs for my site.

WORDPRESS & ME

2009 – My fi rst GenWeb county site with WordPress; NCGenWeb site migrated to WordPress

2011 - Became TNGenWeb State Coordinator – migrated site to WordPress + several county sites

WORDPRESS & ME (CONT’D)

70+ sites and counting!

May 2003 – WordPress version 0.7

New releases every year – latest is version 3.4 released June 13 th, 2012

Initially a blogging platform; as new releases were developed, transitioned into more than just a blogging software, but rather, a content management system.

WORDPRESS BACKGROUND

Matt Mullenweg circa 2008http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Mullenweg

Many of the WordPress developers share a love of jazz music

Every major release named after a jazz musician

JAZZY WORDPRESS

Open Source: a philosophy that promotes distribution source code is available to the public free-of-charge license allows anyone to use the software

WordPress as an Open Source initiative means: source code is developed by the community hundreds of people work on the code and create additional

code to make WordPress do even more you can use it for anything and not pay license fees

WORDPRESS IS OPEN SOURCE

“…free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer”. -- http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

logo of the Open Source Initiative

CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

Software system that lets you create and manage website content easily with little knowledge of web programming and/or markup languages (e.g. HTML)

Most use a database to store information

Content is presented to website visitors using a template

"Content management systems (CMS) place the responsibility of

content creation and maintenance squarely in the hands of non-

technical users.“ – cmswire.com

Traditional Model

Database-Driven Model

DATABASE-DRIVEN

these files have your content

These files have instructions to go get your content and show it back to you all “dressed up”

WHY WORDPRESS? IT’S POPULAR

http://yoast.com/wordpress-stats/

WHY WORDPRESS? FUNCTIONALITY

Plugin Power

Site Design

Social Media

Multiple Users

Community

Content is King!

WORDPRESS SHOWCASE

WORDPRESS SHOWCASE

WORDPRESS SHOWCASE

WORDPRESS SHOWCASE

WORDPRESS SHOWCASE

WORDPRESS GENEALOGY SHOWCASE

WORDPRESS GENEALOGY SHOWCASE

WORDPRESS GENEALOGY SHOWCASE

WORDPRESS GENEALOGY SHOWCASE

WORDPRESS GENEALOGY SHOWCASE

USING WORDPRESS

WordPress.com WordPress.org

GET WORDPRESS

Advantages free and super easy to set up al l of the technical maintenance

work is taken care of — setup, upgrades, spam, backups, security, etc.

your blog is on hundreds of servers, so it ’ l l always remain avai lable, even under high traffi c

your content is backed up automatical ly

you’ l l get extra traffi c from being a part of the WordPress.com community

you can fi nd l ike-minded bloggers using search and the reader

your dashboard is secure (SSL) making it even safer to log in on shared networks

Disadvantages  190+ themes available

which you can customize (for a fee), but you cannot upload a custom theme

you can’t modify the PHP code behind your blog

you can’t upload plugins l imitations on size l imitations on fi le upload

types

WORDPRESS.COM

http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/

AUTOMATTIC

http://automattic.com/

AdvantagesAbility to upload

custom themesAbility to upload

pluginsComplete control to

change & customize

DisadvantagesYou need a web host

(generally costs $7-12 a month)

Requires more knowledge & personal time to run

You’re responsible for stopping spam creating and maintaining

backups of your site updating the WordPress

software when new versions are released

WORDPRESS.ORG

http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/

HANDS-ON

STARTING YOUR WORDPRESS.COM SITE

Before you create a site, it is helpful to have an understanding of what you want and how you want it organized.

Make a list of desired features

Browse similar sites for ideas

Draw it on paper

BUT FIRST……A WORD OF CAUTION

WORDPRESS DASHBOARD(THE CONTROL PANEL)

VIEW THE DASHBOARD

Reminder: Back to Live Dashboard

POSTS

entries that show up listed in reverse chronological order

posts are also displayed in the RSS feed of the site

use categories & tags

PAGES

are stand-alone content

are not listed by dateare not displayed in

the RSS feed do not use categories

& tagscan be made

hierarchical

POSTS VS. PAGES

http://en.support.wordpress.com/post-vs-page/

CATEGORIES

Allow for broad grouping of topics

Required: each post must be assigned to at least one

Can be hierarchical

Used on Wordpress.com to help others find your content

TAGS

Allow for finer details/description of topics

OptionalAre not hierarchical

Used on Wordpress.com to help others find your content

CATEGORIES VS. TAGS

EXAMPLE: CATEGORIES VS. TAGS

http://en.support.wordpress.com/posts/categories-vs-tags/

CATEGORY EXAMPLEC

ATEG

OR

IES

PAGES

CATEGORY EXAMPLE (CONT’D)

http://mashable.com/category/facebook

/

Snippets of code/function that can be placed in the page

Can be placed in sidebars and/or footers

WordPress.com provides MANY widgets automatically

Types of widgets vary

WIDGETS

Objectives

Write new pagesWrite new postsMake front page staticChange the themeApply a header graphicMenu navigationWidgetsWorking with commentsUsers & their roles

LET’S CREATE A SITE!

Reminder: Back to Live Dashboard

WORDPRESS.COM IS A COMMUNITY

Social Features with other WordPress Blogs

Wordpress Codex – the help documentation http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Lessons

WordPress Forums – when you have questions http://wordpress.org/support/

WordPress-focused websites & blogs Lorelle on WordPres - http://lorelle.wordpress.com/ WPBeginner - http://www.wpbeginner.com WPTuts - http://wp.tutsplus.com/

Misc. State of the Word 2011 -

http://wordpress.tv/2011/08/14/matt-mullenweg-state-of-the-word-2011/ Denise Barrett Olsen (Moultrie Creek) – WP 101 Blog posts http://moultriecreek.us/gazette/?series=wordpress-101 Genealogy Society Webmasters Facebook Group -

https://www.facebook.com/groups/GenSocWebmasters/

WORDPRESS RESOURCES

Part 2: Dissecting the Dashboard – June 25thDelve further into the WordPress DashboardSwitch to WordPress.org and compare features

UNTIL NEXT TIME

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