IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 |
Hi, I'm Morten Rand-Hendriksen and welcome
to Start with a Theme, Food Blogs in WordPress.
| | 00:10 |
In this course, I'll show you how to make
an engaging and appetizing food blog using
| | 00:15 |
two different themes and a plug-in.
First, we'll take a look at some popular
| | 00:20 |
food blogs and what we can learn from
them.
| | 00:23 |
Then, we'll install the gallery theme and
explore its features.
| | 00:27 |
We'll move on to the truly minimal theme
for more advanced features and ad management.
| | 00:33 |
And finally, we'll look at how to add
recipes to your blog the smart way, with
| | 00:37 |
the ReciPress plug-in.
So let's get cracking with Start with a
| | 00:41 |
Theme, Food Blogs in WordPress.
| | 00:44 |
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| What you should know before starting this course| 00:00 |
Before embarking on this journey of food
blogging discovery with me.
| | 00:04 |
It's important that you have a functioning
WordPress site to work with, and that you
| | 00:08 |
know the basics of how to set up, and
configure a WordPress site.
| | 00:12 |
If this is the first time you are using
WordPress, I encourage you to go check
| | 00:16 |
out, my WordPress Essential Training
course in the lynda.com library.
| | 00:21 |
This course will walk you through the
process of setting up and configuring a
| | 00:24 |
Wordpress site.
And will also show you how to create new
| | 00:27 |
posts, organize your content and master
the WordPress back-end.
| | 00:33 |
You may also want to check out the
Installing and Running WordPress Series.
| | 00:36 |
Which showcases four different methods for
installing WordPress on your computer for
| | 00:41 |
testing purposes.
This series has four courses, each
| | 00:45 |
outlining a different method.
What course and what method works for you,
| | 00:50 |
depends on your setup and your chosen
platform.
| | 00:53 |
It's all explained in the courses so just
start with one and see where it takes you.
| | 00:59 |
With the functioning WordPress site and
the WordPress Essential Training Course in
| | 01:02 |
hand, let's start building food blogs.
| | 01:06 |
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|
|
1. Setting Up WordPress for Food BloggingFood blogs in the wild| 00:00 |
When building a food blog, or any blog for
that matter, it's important to have a
| | 00:04 |
clear idea of what type of content you're
going to be posting first.
| | 00:09 |
The type or types of content you'll put on
your site will dictate the type theme you
| | 00:14 |
choose and also help you narrow down your
options.
| | 00:17 |
It's also important to look at what other
people are doing and pick up on the trends
| | 00:22 |
in the field.
Because if you're going to launch
| | 00:24 |
something like a food blog, which a lot of
people do, it's important to make sure
| | 00:28 |
that you fit in with the current trends
and that you are doing what other people
| | 00:32 |
are doing, so that you don't look like
something completely different.
| | 00:35 |
The best way to do that is to look at some
popular food blogs.
| | 00:39 |
This will give us an indication of what
the trends are and also what works and
| | 00:42 |
what doesn't work.
And we can find some very strong trends on
| | 00:46 |
these food blogs, the first one being
heavy use of large images.
| | 00:50 |
As you can see on this blog, there's a
huge image spanning across the entire
| | 00:55 |
screen that you can scroll through.
And when you scroll further down, you'll
| | 00:59 |
see that there are more large images in
the index.
| | 01:01 |
So you have a large image with some text
on it that leads to the individual post.
| | 01:06 |
Looking at other posts, you'll also see
that people tend to use very large images
| | 01:10 |
within posts.
These aren't merely set next to the text,
| | 01:14 |
but are full feature images that take up
the entire span of the text area.
| | 01:19 |
And there's a simple reason for this.
When you are blogging about food what you
| | 01:23 |
want to do is give people the experience
of the food without actually having them
| | 01:28 |
eat the food.
So the more images you can add in and the
| | 01:31 |
bigger and brighter those images are the
better.
| | 01:34 |
Another popular trend is to post recipes.
And when you do post recipes, people also
| | 01:41 |
tend to add images into the recipes to
show step by step, how the recipe is put together.
| | 01:47 |
This is a great way of practicing
photography as well as blogging and it
| | 01:51 |
also gives the viewer a very clear
indication of how everything is supposed
| | 01:55 |
to fit together.
Because simply reading a recipe often
| | 01:58 |
isn't enough.
You need to really take part in the
| | 02:01 |
experience and see what every stage should
be.
| | 02:03 |
And by using photos you can really make
that happen.
| | 02:06 |
A popular trend in blogging in general,
and in particular in food blogging, is to
| | 02:12 |
use what's called a masonry layout.
Now a masonry layout is what has been
| | 02:16 |
popularized by Pinterest, where you see
the posts are stacked vertically, and are
| | 02:22 |
not really lining up horizontally.
This allows you to get far more content
| | 02:27 |
into smaller space, and although it looks
messy it's actually a great way for people
| | 02:33 |
to be able to navigate your content.
And people tend to understand it now
| | 02:36 |
because it's so common.
So a masonry layout may or may not be a
| | 02:40 |
good idea for your blog, but it's worth
exploring.
| | 02:43 |
Color choices are also extremely important
when it comes to food blogging.
| | 02:47 |
You want to pick a color scheme that fits
with an overall content of your blog, so
| | 02:52 |
for example if you're writing about sweet
stuff all the time, picking a color scheme
| | 02:56 |
of baby blue and baby pink can actually be
a great idea because it fits in with the
| | 03:02 |
overall colors of the food that you are
writing about.
| | 03:05 |
Whereas, if you are writing about spicy
food, that's really bold, you may want to
| | 03:08 |
use very strong bold colors instead.
So think carefully about your color
| | 03:13 |
choices, and pick color choices that work
well with your overall contents.
| | 03:18 |
That said, the strongest trend in design
on the web and also in design for food
| | 03:23 |
blogs is lots of white space and
minimalist design as you can see here.
| | 03:28 |
This requires very little because you're
mainly putting the content in focus.
| | 03:33 |
And this type of design is also quite easy
on the eye.
| | 03:36 |
The last trend has less to do with
blogging that how people interact with
| | 03:40 |
your content, and that is Pinterest.
You'll notice that on almost every food
| | 03:45 |
blog you'll find Pinterest links all over
the place.
| | 03:49 |
You can find links to follow the food
blogger on Pinterest and you can find
| | 03:53 |
links to pin individual images or entire
posts of the Pinterest.
| | 03:58 |
This is becoming really important because
a lot of people consume lots of
| | 04:02 |
information really quickly on Pinterest.
So when their looking for new recipes or
| | 04:06 |
places to eat they're likely to go to
Pinterest, find a pinboard that has
| | 04:10 |
information about other recipes or places
to eat and then just quickly just scroll
| | 04:15 |
through it.
And the only way to get on those
| | 04:17 |
pinboards, is by letting your readers
easily pin your contents.
| | 04:22 |
Based on what other food bloggers are
doing, it's pretty clear, for your blog to
| | 04:26 |
be successful you need to focus on great
images, lots of images, an easy pinning on Pinterest.
| | 04:33 |
So that's what we'll look for in a theme.
| | 04:35 |
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| Understanding what a theme is and how it works| 00:00 |
In WordPress, the visual presence of a
site is controlled by themes.
| | 00:05 |
Themes are a clusters of files that create
what you see on a WordPress site.
| | 00:10 |
They control the design and the layout,
and often functionality of the site.
| | 00:14 |
The cool thing about how themes work is
that you can swap themes out, without
| | 00:19 |
disturbing the content.
This means you can change the theme and
| | 00:22 |
there by the look and functionality of
your site, at any time without having to
| | 00:27 |
worry about the content having to be
rewritten and republished.
| | 00:30 |
If you haven't worked with WordPress
before and you haven't watched the
| | 00:34 |
WordPress essential training course,
here's a crash course on how to install
| | 00:38 |
and activate new themes.
Out of the box, WordPress ships with
| | 00:42 |
default themes, and one of these themes
will be activated when you install WordPress.
| | 00:46 |
Currently that default theme is 2012, but
depending on when you install WordPress it
| | 00:51 |
may be 2013, or even a later model.
To select what theme you're using you need
| | 00:56 |
to go to the WordPress Admin Panel.
If you're logged in, you can go to the
| | 00:59 |
WordPress toolbar, and go to the site
name, and then either select Themes directly.
| | 01:04 |
Or you can click on the site name, go to
the Dashboard, and then select Appearance
| | 01:09 |
and Themes.
Under Manage Themes, you can see what
| | 01:14 |
themes are currently installed on your
site.
| | 01:16 |
And as you can see I have a Twenty Twelve
theme, which is the current theme.
| | 01:18 |
And I also have the Twenty Eleven theme,
which is an option.
| | 01:21 |
If I want to swap out the themes, I want
to use Twenty Eleven instead, I can either
| | 01:25 |
click Activate, and this will activate the
theme immediately.
| | 01:28 |
Or, I can click on the screenshot, and
this will take me to the theme customizer.
| | 01:34 |
From here, I can customize the theme
before I take it live.
| | 01:38 |
So I can go and click on Colors and switch
to the dark color scheme.
| | 01:44 |
And I can click on Layout and switch to
one column no sidebar.
| | 01:49 |
These options in the customizer will
change depending on the themes.
| | 01:52 |
So some themes have a lot of options, some
themes have very little options and some
| | 01:56 |
themes almost have no options.
If I like what I see, I can click Save and
| | 02:00 |
Activate, and when I go back to my site
now, you'll see it looks completely different.
| | 02:08 |
If I don't like what I see, I can go back
to the Themes, switch back to the Twenty
| | 02:13 |
Twelve theme and now my site looks the way
it did in the beginning.
| | 02:18 |
So what if you want to install a new
theme, something that's not currently
| | 02:21 |
featured on your site.
It's just as easy.
| | 02:24 |
Go back to Themes, and under Install
Themes, you can install new themes in
| | 02:30 |
several different ways.
There are a lot of themes that are
| | 02:32 |
available directly inside the word press
theme directory that you can download from
| | 02:36 |
the theme installer.
You can find these themes either by
| | 02:40 |
searching for them by name or keyword.
You can use the filters here to pick the
| | 02:44 |
themes that fit with your parameters.
You can go and look at Featured Themes.
| | 02:50 |
The Newest Themes or Recently Updated
Themes and you can even upload a theme
| | 02:57 |
that you've downloaded from some other
website.
| | 02:59 |
By simply uploading the zip file that has
the theme inside it.
| | 03:04 |
If you know what you're looking for, for
example the super hero theme.
| | 03:09 |
You can simply click Search, find the
theme, click Install Now, and the theme is
| | 03:16 |
downloaded and installed into your site.
Now you can go back to Themes.
| | 03:22 |
You see that we now have three themes
installed, Twenty Twelve, Twenty Eleven,
| | 03:26 |
and Super Hero.
And now I can click Activate to activate
| | 03:29 |
the Superhero theme.
And when I go back to my sites, it looks
| | 03:33 |
completely different again.
Because now I'm running the superhero theme.
| | 03:38 |
If I've installed the Superhero theme, and
I want to customize it, I can go up to my
| | 03:43 |
WordPress Toolbar, and instead of
selecting Themes, I'll select Customize,
| | 03:48 |
and this will take me to the theme
customizer.
| | 03:50 |
From here, I can now just change whatever
settings are available for this theme.
| | 03:54 |
And as you can see, the superhero theme
doesn't really have as many settings as
| | 03:58 |
the 2011 theme did.
Now you know how to manage themes on your site.
| | 04:04 |
That means it's time to install and
activate some new themes that work well
| | 04:08 |
with food blogs.
| | 04:10 |
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| Tips on food blogging| 00:00 |
Before we dive in and start customizing
our site for food blogging, let me give
| | 00:05 |
you some quick tips on how to use
WordPress to publish great food blogging content.
| | 00:09 |
If you remember from earlier in the
course, I showed you a series of popular
| | 00:13 |
food blogs.
And they all have these commonalities,
| | 00:16 |
including really great pictures of food,
and also image galleries and so on.
| | 00:21 |
For this course, I want to do two things.
I want to create a great theme that I can
| | 00:26 |
use to display these pictures and also the
content.
| | 00:28 |
And I also want to be able to add recipes
into my site.
| | 00:32 |
For now I just added a series of posts
that have pictures and texts and more
| | 00:37 |
pictures for each item.
So going to one of these items, you'll see
| | 00:40 |
what I'm talking about.
So, if I go into this review of a
| | 00:43 |
restaurant in Vancouver, you'll see
there's a large image on top.
| | 00:47 |
There's then the title and some text, and
I have an image gallery underneath.
| | 00:53 |
So let's look at the inside of this post
to see how it's set up.
| | 00:57 |
In the post, I have a title, I have the
text, and I've also inserted a WordPress
| | 01:01 |
image gallery, it's right here.
If you don't know how to insert a
| | 01:05 |
WordPress Image Gallery, you simply go to
Add Media, you Upload some images and then
| | 01:10 |
you click on Create Gallery.
This will take you to the gallery function
| | 01:14 |
and from here you can select whatever
images you want to be in your gallery.
| | 01:17 |
You see they build down here.
You click Create New Gallery, and then you
| | 01:22 |
can organize your images, caption them,
and when you click Insert Gallery, you get
| | 01:27 |
this gallery box.
That's really all you need to get an image
| | 01:31 |
gallery going.
Once you do that, your theme will
| | 01:34 |
integrate with the gallery and displayed
images in different ways, as you'll see
| | 01:37 |
later in the course.
I also wanted to add a large image at the
| | 01:41 |
top of my post, and to do that, I used the
featured image function.
| | 01:45 |
That way, that image is associated with
the post in a different way, so it can be
| | 01:49 |
displayed in indexes as well as on the
post itself.
| | 01:52 |
And it's usually displayed above the title
instead of below it.
| | 01:56 |
In some cases, you may want to put the
featured image into the post itself too,
| | 02:00 |
but that depends on your theme.
So, you need to check with your theme
| | 02:03 |
first, and how it uses your featured
images, and then, you can pick whether or
| | 02:07 |
not you want to do this.
The final thing I did was I organized my contents.
| | 02:12 |
So, in this case, I've just created two
categories.
| | 02:14 |
I have Restaurant Reviews and Recipes.
So far, I don't have any recipes, but I
| | 02:18 |
know they're coming, so I've created a
category for them.
| | 02:20 |
If you want to you can also create further
categories and you can also use tags.
| | 02:25 |
In food blogs, it is very popular to use
tags that specify what type of food you're
| | 02:29 |
looking at or what type of restaurant or
whatever it is you're writing about.
| | 02:33 |
And tags can be a great way of organizing
content.
| | 02:35 |
So think about your categories and tags
and structure it in a rational way, so
| | 02:40 |
it's easy for people to find what they're
looking for.
| | 02:42 |
Now that we have some content it's time to
get started.
| | 02:45 |
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|
|
2. Using GalleryInstalling and activating Gallery| 00:00 |
The first theme we're going to install is
called, Gallery and was made by Chris Wallace.
| | 00:05 |
If you want to see what it looks like, you
can click on View Theme Demo.
| | 00:09 |
And here you get a demo of the theme.
As you can see from the preview it's the
| | 00:13 |
masonry style theme, meaning the layout is
much like you see on Pinterest.
| | 00:17 |
It also means as you resize your browser
window, the content will automatically
| | 00:23 |
reorganize and fits all the way down to a
smartphone size.
| | 00:27 |
Meaning you can use this theme to display
your content for everyone regardless of
| | 00:31 |
what type of device they are using to
access your site.
| | 00:35 |
Gallery is a lightway theme that puts
photos front and center.
| | 00:38 |
So it's a great choice for food blogs.
Now Gallery, is a free theme from a
| | 00:43 |
premium theme foundry, so to be able to
use it you have to setup an account first.
| | 00:48 |
To start the process, you click Download
Theme, and you are taken to the Sign Up
| | 00:52 |
page for an account.
Now don't worry about the payment options
| | 00:55 |
here because this is a free theme, so
you'll see in a second that you don't
| | 00:59 |
actually have to pay.
So I'm going to select Paypal express,
| | 01:02 |
I'll have to put in all my information
here, and when I've filled out all the
| | 01:09 |
information, I click Next.
Now I'll get an email that I have to
| | 01:14 |
confirm before I can go further.
After you have received the confirmation
| | 01:18 |
email and confirmed your account, you are
ready to log in to UpThemes and download Gallery.
| | 01:24 |
If you've gone out of Upthemes, you can
back to it by going to upthemes.com and
| | 01:28 |
click Sign In, and from here you just put
in your credentials, click Login.
| | 01:37 |
And you're taken directly to your
Downloads.
| | 01:39 |
Here you find the link to
gallery-latest.zip, if for some reason,
| | 01:44 |
you end up on the Members area instead,
all you have to do is click under Useful
| | 01:48 |
Links on Gallery.
I'm going to right-click on the link,
| | 01:52 |
click Save As and store this on my
Desktop.
| | 01:57 |
And now the zip file for the theme is
downloaded onto my computer.
| | 02:00 |
So all I have to do is go to my site, Log
In and go to Themes.
| | 02:07 |
Select Install Themes, select Upload,
Browse for the file.
| | 02:13 |
And I'll find it here on my Desktop >
gallery-latest, click Install Now.
| | 02:21 |
And the zip folder with the theme is
uploaded into my site and installed.
| | 02:25 |
And from here, all that's left to do is
click Activate.
| | 02:30 |
Now the gallery theme is the current theme
on my site.
| | 02:32 |
So, when I go to the front page, you see
my sight now runs the gallery theme.
| | 02:38 |
And when I resize my browser window,
you'll see my contents reorganizes just
| | 02:43 |
like it did in the demo.
Once installed and activated, you'll see
| | 02:50 |
that the gallery theme looks pretty good
out of the box.
| | 02:51 |
It's even responsive, meaning it'll look
good on smaller screens and smartphones as
| | 02:55 |
well and that's pretty much a must for
good food blogs these days.
| | 03:00 |
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| Basic theme customization| 00:00 |
Gallery is what I like to call a baseline
theme.
| | 00:03 |
Meaning, it only has the core
customization features you get with WordPress.
| | 00:07 |
Even so, you can make some customization
to make the theme look and function the
| | 00:11 |
way you want.
Normally, when you install a new theme.
| | 00:15 |
You want to use the theme customizer to
change the functionality of the theme.
| | 00:19 |
But it doesn't always work all that well.
And in the gallery theme, the theme
| | 00:23 |
customizer doesn't really do a very good
job.
| | 00:25 |
So instead, we'll go to the back end and
customize the theme in the old fashioned way.
| | 00:30 |
So, I'm going to open the Dashboard first.
And then I'm going to open the site in a
| | 00:34 |
separate tab, so I can easily switch back
and forth.
| | 00:37 |
And now I'm going to go to Appearance, and
this is where I find all my customization options.
| | 00:42 |
So, let's start with Menus.
If you look at the theme itself, you'll
| | 00:45 |
see we have two menus.
We have one here at the top, and then
| | 00:49 |
scroll down to the bottom, you have a
second menu at the very bottom.
| | 00:52 |
This is pretty standard for themes these
days.
| | 00:54 |
You usually have a menu at the bottom, so
that you can easily navigate where you
| | 00:58 |
want to go.
You'll also notice that this theme has a
| | 01:00 |
pretty cool feature in the menu.
That when I scroll down, you'll see that
| | 01:05 |
the menu sticks to the top of my view.
So, it's still here even though I'm
| | 01:09 |
scrolled past the header, and it's
persistent throughout the site.
| | 01:13 |
To custom the menu, I can go to my Menu
Options, and here I see I have two menus,
| | 01:19 |
I have the Primary Menu and the Footer
Menu.
| | 01:21 |
And I can customize each of these
individually.
| | 01:24 |
I've created one new menu called Header
Menu and it has three items.
| | 01:27 |
The home link, a link to the restaurant
review category, and a link to the recipes category.
| | 01:32 |
And I could also make a Footer Menu here
if I wanted to.
| | 01:38 |
And add different menu items to that one.
So, I'm going to go down here and view
| | 01:42 |
all, and then I maybe pick just these two,
add to menu.
| | 01:49 |
So, now I just have recipes and restaurant
reviews, I'm going to reorganize them.
| | 01:53 |
Click Save menu, and then I can assign the
footer menu as the footer menu.
| | 02:00 |
Now when I reload, you'll see the main
menu stays the same.
| | 02:04 |
But the footer menu now only has two
items.
| | 02:06 |
Next, lets look at the header.
If you've worked with WordPress before,
| | 02:11 |
you know that the header by default is
usually just text.
| | 02:15 |
So, it usually just displays the site
title and the site tag line, but you also
| | 02:19 |
have the option of adding an image instead
and that's the case with the gallery theme.
| | 02:24 |
So, if you go up to the top here, so you
can see the header, you see that currently
| | 02:27 |
it's just playing the name of the site,
which is Dinner Club, and then it's
| | 02:30 |
displaying this text, which is a standard
site description for any WordPress site.
| | 02:35 |
What I want to do is swap this out for a
graphic logo that I want to use on my site.
| | 02:40 |
So I've created a logo, it's here on my
desktop.
| | 02:43 |
(MUSIC).
It just looks like this.
| | 02:48 |
So, what I want to do now is use that logo
in place of the text.
| | 02:53 |
So, I'm going to go back to my Dashboard,
go to Appearance and Header, and here
| | 02:58 |
under Select Image, I'm going to click
Choose File, navigate to the file I want
| | 03:03 |
to use.
This is a transparent png of the logo,
| | 03:07 |
click Open, and Upload.
The image is now uploaded into the
| | 03:11 |
service, and I am asked if I want to crop
it.
| | 03:14 |
That's because by default, this theme
wants you to put up a square logo on the
| | 03:18 |
side that goes next to the text, but
that's not what I want to do.
| | 03:21 |
So, I can either grab the cropper and
re-size it, but if I do I lose the
| | 03:26 |
transparency of this image, so instead I'm
just going to click skip cropping publish
| | 03:30 |
image as is.
That way, I preserve the transparency of
| | 03:34 |
my PNG, and you'll see in a second why
that's important.
| | 03:37 |
Now, that I've added the image, I'm
going to scroll down, and under header
| | 03:41 |
text I'm going to uncheck show header text
with your image.
| | 03:45 |
Now, I'll click Save Changes, reload the
site.
| | 03:50 |
And you'll see in place of the header
title I now have my logo.
| | 03:53 |
But I guess I'll click on it, it still
takes me to the front page.
| | 03:57 |
Now, all that's left to do is change the
tagline.
| | 04:00 |
And for that I'll go back to my Dashboard,
go to Settings and General, and here
| | 04:05 |
you'll see the Tagline, and I'll change
that to.
| | 04:08 |
When I have the tagline in once I'll
scroll down, click Save Changes.
| | 04:15 |
Reload the site again, and here you have
Dinner Club, checking out all the cool
| | 04:20 |
restaurants, so you know where to go.
There are two more options worth
| | 04:24 |
mentioning in this theme.
One is the background, that would be the
| | 04:27 |
background of the area around, where the
posts are.
| | 04:30 |
You can customize that by going to
Appearance and Background, and changing
| | 04:36 |
the color or adding an image.
I would highly recommend just changing the color.
| | 04:40 |
So here, you can set the color to
something else if you want.
| | 04:42 |
Let's say, I want to have a darker gray,
so I'll scroll down, click Save Changes,
| | 04:47 |
Reload the page.
And you see the background changed.
| | 04:51 |
And finally, you can add and subtract
widgets.
| | 04:54 |
Now, there are two sets of widgets for
this theme.
| | 04:57 |
One set is found in the footer.
Here you can see reason post widgets in
| | 05:01 |
the footer right now.
The other set of widgets is in the regular
| | 05:05 |
sidebar, but to see the sidebar you have
to go to a post.
| | 05:07 |
So, I'll go to a post and here you see I
have regular sidebar widgets.
| | 05:13 |
To customize the widgets, I go to my
Dashboard, go under Appearance, and Widgets.
| | 05:19 |
And here you see you have the main side
bar and also the footer.
| | 05:22 |
And for each, you can drag and drop
widgets in individually, or reorganize
| | 05:26 |
them in any way you wish.
So, if I want to place a search widget, in
| | 05:31 |
my main side bar, and also a search widget
in my footer.
| | 05:34 |
I can do that, and as I place them in and
reload my site, you'll see that they are
| | 05:39 |
automatically added.
So, here we have the search bar in the
| | 05:44 |
side bar and there's also a search widget
in the footer.
| | 05:46 |
With just a few minor adjustments, you can
make your site look and feel different
| | 05:53 |
with the customization options available.
And if you want to take it a step further,
| | 05:58 |
making a child theme off gallery is also
simple.
| | 06:01 |
If you're interested in making a child
theme, you should check out my WordPress
| | 06:05 |
building child themes course in the
lynda.com library to get a head start.
| | 06:10 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using post formats for better visibility| 00:00 |
Gallery comes with eight Post Formats.
Post Formats are optional features that
| | 00:05 |
can be built into a theme that change the
appearance and behavior of individual
| | 00:09 |
posts, either on the index page or in the
single post view.
| | 00:13 |
Post Formats are optional and how they are
implemented is up to the theme developer.
| | 00:18 |
So if you use them and plan to change your
theme down the road, keep in mind that the
| | 00:23 |
output can change dramatically between
different themes.
| | 00:26 |
Like I said, there are eight Post Formats
in gallery.
| | 00:30 |
But only three of them are really
functional and worth using, so let me show
| | 00:34 |
you exactly how those three work.
First of all let's look at what a standard
| | 00:39 |
regular post looks like.
If I go to one of these regular posts
| | 00:42 |
you'll notice in the index page you have
the featured image, you have the title and
| | 00:47 |
you have the excerpt of the post.
If you click either on the featured image
| | 00:51 |
or on the title, you are taken to the post
itself.
| | 00:55 |
Here you have the featured image, huge at
the top.
| | 00:58 |
You then have the title and more
information.
| | 01:00 |
You even have an image of the author, and
then you have the gallery.
| | 01:03 |
And this is a standard WordPress gallery
I've just inserted in, just like I showed
| | 01:08 |
you earlier in the course.
When I click on any of these thumbnails.
| | 01:11 |
They automatically popup in this nice
slideshow view where I can surf through
| | 01:17 |
them and I can close it down so this is a
really great view.
| | 01:22 |
Now, let's look at one of the Post
Formats, you may have noticed that on my
| | 01:27 |
front page, there's one post that looks
different from the other ones, it's this one.
| | 01:32 |
That's because I've applied the gallery
Post Format to this particular post.
| | 01:36 |
What happens when you apply the gallery
Post Format is instead of the featured
| | 01:40 |
image being placed at the top you get a
display of the image gallery right inside
| | 01:45 |
the post on the front page.
You can now scroll through these images
| | 01:50 |
using the navigation buttons.
And if you click on one of the images, it
| | 01:54 |
pops up in this gallery view right on the
index page so you can navigate through the images.
| | 01:59 |
That means it can give people this really
immersive experience right on the front
| | 02:04 |
page and show them more images.
However, this is a little bit buggy so you
| | 02:08 |
have to use it the right way.
And I'll show you exactly what I mean.
| | 02:11 |
If I go into this post, you'll notice
something a bit odd.
| | 02:15 |
Well first of all you have the featured
image at the top and that's great, but
| | 02:19 |
when I scroll down you'll see that we have
the image for the image gallery, but
| | 02:24 |
there's no content, or rather, the content
is currently hidden.
| | 02:28 |
If I hover my mouse over this, you'll see
that the navigation buttons are all the
| | 02:31 |
way out here at the top.
And that's because this isn't being
| | 02:34 |
initiated quite correctly.
So what happens is when I click on the
| | 02:38 |
navigation here, it'll jump to a proper
initiation.
| | 02:43 |
The navigation buttons jump down, and now
you see the content.
| | 02:46 |
So it's a little bit buggy.
And that means my recommendation is to put
| | 02:50 |
galleries on the bottom of the post if you
want to use this Post Format.
| | 02:54 |
Now that I have access to it, I can open
it just like I did before, and I can also
| | 02:58 |
scroll through these images.
So if you're going to use the gallery Post
| | 03:01 |
Format, just remember that this is how it
behaves; so maybe put your galleries at
| | 03:05 |
the bottom of your post.
And I know what you're going to ask now.
| | 03:08 |
How do I apply Post Formats?
Well if we go to Edit This Post, you'll
| | 03:12 |
see exactly how.
So I'll click Edit Post, and you can see
| | 03:15 |
it's just a standard post.
It has an image gallery for Wordpress here.
| | 03:19 |
And then it has the content underneath.
The format is decided in the right hand
| | 03:23 |
side under format.
And here you can see it's set to gallery.
| | 03:27 |
You also see we have a series of other
formats.
| | 03:29 |
We have standard, aside, video, image,
link, quotes, status, and gallery.
| | 03:34 |
And you can change these at any time.
If you don't see the Format tab, go to
| | 03:40 |
Screen Options, and select Format.
You'll notice that if I check Format, it
| | 03:44 |
goes away, and if I check it again, it
appears.
| | 03:48 |
That means if I want to change this back
to standard format, I simply click
| | 03:52 |
Standard > Update.
And now when I jump to the front page,
| | 03:57 |
you'll see that the post behaves just like
all the other posts.
| | 04:02 |
You can also apply formats in bulk by
going to the posts Selecting whatever
| | 04:07 |
posts you want to apply the format to.
Go into Bulk Actions and Edit.
| | 04:12 |
Click on Apply.
And here you see format is an option.
| | 04:16 |
And you can set these two posts to the
gallery Post Format and update them.
| | 04:21 |
Now when I go to the front page you can
see we have two posts with image galleries.
| | 04:27 |
Here and here.
I can scroll through them like I did
| | 04:31 |
before, I can open images for each of them
and they look quite different.
| | 04:38 |
But like I said before, this also has that
problem where the first image is not
| | 04:42 |
initiated properly, so it, the behavior is
a little bit odd.
| | 04:47 |
So those were the standard and gallery
Post Formats.
| | 04:50 |
But there's two more I want to show you.
The first one is status.
| | 04:54 |
So let me make a new post.
I'll call it status, and then today's date.
| | 05:02 |
And then I'll put in a status.
Now instead of saving this as standard
| | 05:11 |
post which would look really weird because
it's just two sentences and it's not
| | 05:14 |
really a good post, I'm going to change it
to status.
| | 05:18 |
A status is like a status update on
Twitter or Facebook.
| | 05:22 |
And you'll see when I publish this that it
appears in a very different way on the
| | 05:26 |
front page.
When I go to the front page you'll see the
| | 05:30 |
status appears as this gray box with just
the status techs.
| | 05:34 |
It doesn't have the title.
Of course I click on the pound sign and go
| | 05:38 |
directly to the polls.
And there I can also leave a comment.
| | 05:40 |
But the whole idea of the status poll's
format is exactly this.
| | 05:44 |
To have these short status's that appear
in your indexes so that people can easily
| | 05:48 |
see what you're doing.
So now we have standard Gallery, and status.
| | 05:54 |
And the last thing I want to show you is
the video Post Formats and this is really neat.
| | 05:58 |
Let's say you find a video on YouTube or
any other video sharing site, that you
| | 06:02 |
want to share with people.
In that case, you want to put the video
| | 06:05 |
into a post.
And you want to display it.
| | 06:07 |
But, the problem is that often you put a
video in, but people have to go into the
| | 06:11 |
video to see it.
Well that's not the case with, Gallery.
| | 06:14 |
If I go and find a video, I'm simply going
to copy and paste the URL to the video.
| | 06:18 |
I can go in and create a new post.
I'll call it video, and then I'll put in
| | 06:29 |
some text, and then I will paste in the
URL to the video.
| | 06:34 |
Now I'm going to use the paste as plain
text feature here, to strip off any links
| | 06:39 |
or other information so that I could just
get the text.
| | 06:42 |
This is just the text for the URL to the
video.
| | 06:45 |
I'll categorize this as a video, and then
I will go to Format, and select Video.
| | 06:50 |
When I now click Publish and jump to the
front page again, you'll see that the
| | 06:56 |
video appears as a live video in my index
page.
| | 07:00 |
And not only that, but it's placed at the
top and you can play it, and you can blow
| | 07:04 |
it up to fullscreen.
>> In this movie.
| | 07:09 |
>> Right from the index page, the text
that I put in is displayed underneath instead.
| | 07:14 |
I can now jump directly to the post by
clicking on the comments link.
| | 07:18 |
And here you see in the post the video is
also at the top with the text underneath.
| | 07:24 |
This is really neat, and it's a great user
experience because you can then watch the
| | 07:28 |
videos right from the index page.
You don't have to navigate to any single page.
| | 07:32 |
Of course, it's unfortunate that you have
to click on the comments link to get to
| | 07:35 |
the post.
But the reality is when people see a video
| | 07:38 |
like that or probably just going to watch
the video and read your short comment.
| | 07:42 |
These are the post formats I would say are
worth using in the gallery theme.
| | 07:46 |
You could try to use the other ones.
But you'll notice that they don't work all
| | 07:49 |
that well and they're kind of wonky.
So I would stick with standard video,
| | 07:54 |
status, and gallery.
Using Post format wisely can be a great
| | 07:59 |
way to differentiate the content on your
site and create nice visual breaks in the
| | 08:03 |
index pages.
Just remember to use them for what they
| | 08:06 |
were meant to be used for.
| | 08:07 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Things to keep in mind when using Gallery| 00:00 |
Gallery is a clean and easy to use theme
that works well in most situations.
| | 00:05 |
Here are a few things to keep in mind, so
you and your users don't run into strange
| | 00:10 |
problems down the road.
First off, it's possible that when you
| | 00:13 |
install gallery, your WordPress toolbar
disappeared just like what you see here.
| | 00:18 |
There's no toolbar at the top anymore.
This is because this theme sometimes turns
| | 00:23 |
the toolbar off and there's good reason
for that.
| | 00:25 |
You remember that I demoed how when you
scroll down, the menu sticks to the top of
| | 00:30 |
the screen and the WordPress toolbar
interferes with this.
| | 00:32 |
So in some cases, the toolbar is turned
off.
| | 00:36 |
If you want to turn the toolbar back on,
here's what you do.
| | 00:39 |
First, go to your URL and write wp/admin
to get to the Admin panel.
| | 00:45 |
From here, you can click on your own name
and go to Edit My Profile or you can go to
| | 00:50 |
Users and select your profile.
And under the profile settings you will
| | 00:56 |
find toolbar and show toolbar when viewing
site.
| | 00:59 |
If you check this scroll down and I'll
remove this password here and click update profile.
| | 01:07 |
The tool bar is now activated.
I'm going to go back to the page, you'll
| | 01:12 |
see the toolbar is there.
The second issue has to do with videos.
| | 01:16 |
You'll remember how videos got pulled out
of the content and placed on top of the
| | 01:20 |
post, so if i go to the single post Again,
you'll see the video at the top and then
| | 01:25 |
the content underneath, so then the
question is what happens if I add more
| | 01:29 |
than one video to one post.
Well let's find out.
| | 01:31 |
I'll go to YouTube again and find a new
video.
| | 01:34 |
I'll copy that video out and then go in
and edit my post, and I will paste them...
| | 01:42 |
The second video link.
So, again I'll use Paste as Plain Text,
| | 01:46 |
paste on the video.
Make sure Video as format is checked.
| | 01:50 |
Click Update and then go and view my post.
But I now scroll down, you'll see that the
| | 01:58 |
second video I added is added as the first
video in this view.
| | 02:02 |
And now I have both videos stacked, one on
top of the other.
| | 02:05 |
I can even play them at the same time.
(NOISE).
| | 02:08 |
>> Another element where we could
(CROSSTALK) (INAUDIBLE).
| | 02:12 |
>> So needless to say, this is not the
best user experience, and it gets even
| | 02:21 |
worse on the front page.
Because here you also get the two videos
| | 02:26 |
right on top of one another.
That means if your'e going to use videos
| | 02:30 |
in your theme, I recommend you only place
one video in each post.
| | 02:34 |
So you avoid this double video problem
that you see here because this is kind of
| | 02:38 |
strange when you have two videos directly
on top of one another.
| | 02:41 |
And even though it is exactly what you
wanted, it looks like it's a mistake, and
| | 02:45 |
that's never good.
I previously showed you the issue with the
| | 02:48 |
gallery post types, but I'll repeat it
again.
| | 02:51 |
Keep in mind that when you add the gallery
post type, the gallery may not initiate
| | 02:56 |
properly and may end up covering some of
your content.
| | 03:00 |
So it's important that you remember that
when you place your gallery, and that
| | 03:03 |
usually means placing the gallery at the
very bottom of the post.
| | 03:09 |
Overall, Gallery is a great theme for a
simple and easy to access food blog.
| | 03:14 |
Though it has limited customization
options, it can be personalized to a
| | 03:18 |
degree with a custom logo in the header.
And if you use the post formats properly,
| | 03:22 |
you can create a nice user experience for
anyone visiting your site.
| | 03:28 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Using TrulyMinimalInstalling and activating TrulyMinimal| 00:00 |
The second theme we'll look at is
TrulyMinimal from FlareThemes.
| | 00:04 |
Like the name suggests, TrulyMinimal is a
minimalist design theme that puts the
| | 00:09 |
content front and center.
But don't let that fool you.
| | 00:12 |
TrulyMinimal is actually a very advanced
theme and you can see that if you go to
| | 00:16 |
the live demo.
Here you see the minimalist design.
| | 00:19 |
We have lots of white space, there's very
little graphics, and the content is in
| | 00:24 |
focus at all times, but, when you scroll
down, you'll see that we have lots of
| | 00:28 |
advanced features.
We have an advertising management system,
| | 00:31 |
we have custom widgets.
And as you'll see when we install the
| | 00:34 |
theme, we also have other features to help
you customize this theme further.
| | 00:40 |
Truly Minimal is from Flare Themes, which
is a premium theme foundry, but because
| | 00:44 |
this is a free theme, you can download it
without having an account.
| | 00:48 |
So click on the download theme button.
You are taken directly to the public downloads.
| | 00:53 |
And from here, you can download Truly
Minimal.
| | 00:55 |
I'm going to right click on it, and save
it directly on my desktop.
| | 00:59 |
And once the zip file is downloaded, I can
go to my site, go to the themes section,
| | 01:07 |
go to install themes, select upload,
choose the file.
| | 01:15 |
So, here I'll find the downloaded zip
file, and click install now.
| | 01:20 |
The theme is now installed into my site
and I can click activate to activate the theme.
| | 01:29 |
If this is the first time you've ever used
a theme from a premium theme foundery You
| | 01:33 |
may be surprised to see that you landed on
a new page you've never seen before.
| | 01:38 |
That's because a lot of premium theme
foundaries like to add extra features into
| | 01:42 |
word press and this is no exception.
As you can see you now have a new section
| | 01:47 |
in your admin panel that's called truly
minimal where you can manage this theme
| | 01:50 |
and you also have an advertising section
where you can add manage ads.
| | 01:55 |
This theme also suggests that you install
certain plugins, including the easy theme
| | 01:59 |
and plugin upgrades plugin, and the
regenerate thumbnails plugin, and we'll
| | 02:03 |
get to those later in the course.
But for now, let's just take a look at
| | 02:06 |
what the theme looks like on our site.
So I'll go back to the front page, and
| | 02:12 |
here you see that the site is now
completely different from what it was.
| | 02:16 |
But you also see that you need to do some
work with this theme before you can really
| | 02:19 |
use it because the title of the site has
been replaced with a graphic that says
| | 02:24 |
Truly Minimal.
And some of your content looks really
| | 02:27 |
strange like, your videos are gone, your
status looks like a regular post, and
| | 02:32 |
other things are not displaying exactly
how they should.
| | 02:36 |
Out of the box, TrulyMinimal looks great,
but it needs some work so that people will
| | 02:40 |
know what site they're visiting, and also
so that it's personalized for your content.
| | 02:45 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Resizing thumbnails and featured images with a plugin| 00:00 |
When you install a new theme that uses
featured images, it's important to ensure
| | 00:04 |
that the images in your site are the
correct size for that theme.
| | 00:08 |
When you upload an image to WordPress, it
will always be resized to fit whatever
| | 00:13 |
theme is currently active.
Meaning if you were using a different
| | 00:16 |
theme when you uploaded the images, you
won't necessarily have the correct sizes
| | 00:21 |
for the current theme you are using.
Resizing the images can be done
| | 00:25 |
automatically with a plug-in.
The truly minimal theme, knows this and
| | 00:29 |
when the installation is complete it will
remind you to install one of these plugins.
| | 00:34 |
You can see it right up here in this
warning, it says This theme recommends the
| | 00:37 |
following plugins and then suggest the
regenerate thumbnails plugin.
| | 00:41 |
If you've already dismissed this notice or
you don't have it, you can also find the
| | 00:45 |
same plugin by going to Plugins, click Add
New and search for Regenerate Thumbnails.
| | 00:54 |
When you find the plugin, click Install
Now to install it, and once the plugin is
| | 01:01 |
installed, click Activate to activate it.
Now that this plugin is activated, you can
| | 01:06 |
go to tools and click regenerate
thumbnails.
| | 01:11 |
This will take you to an interface where
you can automatically regenerate all the
| | 01:15 |
thumbnails on your entire site.
Now I'll warn you, if you have hundreds or
| | 01:20 |
even thousands of images on your site,
this process can take a very long time.
| | 01:24 |
Or it may stall, so in that case you may
want to go to the media page and
| | 01:29 |
regenerate the images individually.
But if you have a smaller site and not
| | 01:33 |
that many images you can simply click on
Regenerate All Thumbnails.
| | 01:37 |
And the plugin will run through a process
where it finds every single image.
| | 01:41 |
And then resizes every single image to fit
with the current theme and the current
| | 01:46 |
sizes that the theme is requesting.
Once the process is complete, you will get
| | 01:52 |
a message telling you, how many images
were resized and how many images were not
| | 01:55 |
resized if there was a failure.
You can try to regenerate the failed
| | 01:59 |
images again by clicking the button, or
you can ignore them if you know the reason
| | 02:03 |
why they were not regenerated.
Once that is complete, you can also
| | 02:06 |
dismiss this notice because even thou it
says you should install this easy theme
| | 02:10 |
and plugin upgrades plugin.
You don't really need to do it right now.
| | 02:13 |
So you can click Dismiss this notice, and
now that all your thumbnails have been regenerated.
| | 02:19 |
It means that all the images in your site
will fit what ever image sizes your
| | 02:23 |
current theme wants to use.
It's a small step but an important one
| | 02:28 |
that should be done any time you install a
new theme.
| | 02:31 |
Regenerate thumbnails and ensure that the
theme and your image is play nicely together.
| | 02:36 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| TrulyMinimal theme settings| 00:00 |
Themes from Theme Foundries often come
with their own Theme Settings panel, where
| | 00:04 |
you can configure different elements of
the theme.
| | 00:07 |
TrulyMinimal is no exception.
With the theme activated, you should see
| | 00:11 |
two new buttons in the Main menu and the
Admin panel.
| | 00:14 |
The truly Minimal button and Advertising
button.
| | 00:17 |
This button contain the theme settings and
advertising management for the theme.
| | 00:22 |
Let's take a look at the TrulyMinimal
settings first and how you can use them to
| | 00:25 |
customize your site.
As you can see, there are many different
| | 00:28 |
settings here.
And I will go through some of them so you
| | 00:30 |
understand how they work.
And then you can go through the rest by yourself.
| | 00:33 |
Under global options, you have maybe the
most important setting.
| | 00:37 |
And it has to do with replacing the header
image with something else.
| | 00:41 |
Because if you look you'll see by default,
currently your header says truly minimal,
| | 00:45 |
and that's because you're using this
image.
| | 00:47 |
So you want to replace this image with an
image that is part of your logo or has the
| | 00:51 |
site name on it.
I've already created that image and I
| | 00:55 |
uploaded it previously to the previous
theme, but I'm going to upload it again
| | 00:58 |
now, so I'll click Upload Image, find it
on my desktop...
| | 01:01 |
This is a transparent PNG.
The image will upload and automatically
| | 01:06 |
save, and now all I have to do is go back
and reload my page.
| | 01:10 |
And you'll see my new logo appears.
Scrolling down, you can also change the favicon.
| | 01:16 |
That is that little icon that appears up
here next to the same of the site in the tabs.
| | 01:21 |
If you don't have an ICO file for your
favicon, you can create a transparent PNG
| | 01:25 |
and then use the link here to go to a tool
that will help you transform a PNG into an
| | 01:32 |
ICO file.
At the bottom, you can set what your
| | 01:35 |
post's display options are for categories
and the home page.
| | 01:39 |
By default, it's set to big.
And it displays only the excerpts of the post.
| | 01:45 |
When you look at a single post, you'll see
what I'm talking about.
| | 01:47 |
Here we have a single post that has a big
picture at the top, and then it has an
| | 01:51 |
excerpt and it says "continue reading." So
if we change thumbnail to small, and
| | 01:58 |
reload the page.
>> You see we now have a small image for
| | 02:02 |
the text next to it.
And if you set Display Full Post Content
| | 02:06 |
and reload, you'll see instead of
displaying the featured image, you'll
| | 02:13 |
actually see the full post content.
So here you have to pick whichever one
| | 02:17 |
works best for you.
If you feel like you should show the
| | 02:19 |
entire post content on the front page,
then select this option.
| | 02:22 |
If you feel like you should show feature
images in then a small excerpt of a post,
| | 02:27 |
then turn this off and I recommend setting
the post on nail size to big.
| | 02:34 |
The next option is Typography.
This is a very advanced feature that
| | 02:38 |
allows you to control all the fonts and
all the fonts sizes on the entire site.
| | 02:42 |
Here you can use the drop-down to pick
what font you want to use for any element
| | 02:47 |
You also see a preview of that font and
you can even click Edit Font Styling to
| | 02:51 |
edit this further.
Here you can change the letter spacing,
| | 02:55 |
you can set whether the font should be
normal, or uppercase, or capitalized, or lowercase.
| | 02:59 |
You can define a font size, a font weight,
a font style, that would be normal or
| | 03:04 |
italic, and even the decoration if you
want, an underline, for example.
| | 03:09 |
You can do this with any font element on
the site.
| | 03:11 |
You can see here you have the header you
have pulse and page title you have the
| | 03:15 |
pulse and page content.
You have Comment Title.
| | 03:19 |
You have comment content.
You have the sidebar content and you have
| | 03:23 |
the fritter content.
That means you have complete control over
| | 03:27 |
every font element on the site.
So by default the font is set to a Serif
| | 03:32 |
font, but you can change it to a Sans
Serif font or a Mono Space font or any
| | 03:36 |
other fonts you want base don the drop
downs and the Custom settings.
| | 03:40 |
So, here you can really make the site look
and feel the way you want to and match
| | 03:44 |
your visual identity.
Color settings allow you to change the
| | 03:49 |
color scheme of the site, you'll notice
that right now the color scheme is a light blue.
| | 03:53 |
So the links are light blue.
I'm going to hover over them, you get an
| | 03:57 |
orange color.
But you can change that to either dark
| | 04:01 |
blue, and here you see they're dark blue
with orange or you can change it to pink.
| | 04:13 |
And if none of these color schemes work
for you, you can also go in Select Custom
| | 04:17 |
and then you can define your own color
schemes.
| | 04:19 |
So here we can set the font color for the
whole site.
| | 04:21 |
It's currently at dark gary.
We can change it to any other color you want.
| | 04:25 |
And you can change the color of the
primary links and the secondary colors for
| | 04:28 |
the links meaning when you hover over
them.
| | 04:32 |
Under JavaScript you control whether or
not you want to use the bundled JavaScript plugins.
| | 04:37 |
The bundle plugins are Fancy Box and Focus
Form.
| | 04:40 |
Let me show you what Fancy Box does.
If you scroll down to a post that has a
| | 04:44 |
gallery in it and open the post and then
click on one of the images in the gallery,
| | 04:49 |
you'll see it pops up in this fancy box
and here you can navigate between all
| | 04:54 |
different images.
So this is the fancy box plug-in.
| | 04:58 |
If you turn that off, this effect won't
happen, but then you can use a different
| | 05:03 |
plugin to add a different effect instead.
The same goes for Focus Form.
| | 05:07 |
Focus Form appends to forms on your site
and makes them easier and more understandable.
| | 05:12 |
So you can choose whether you want to
leave it on or turn it off.
| | 05:15 |
So just experiment with these and see what
works best.
| | 05:20 |
Template set up is actually a very
advanced feature that allows you to
| | 05:23 |
re-customize how your templates behave.
This is a drag and drop type of feature,
| | 05:29 |
so here you can see I can drag and drop
different elements, so for example if I go
| | 05:33 |
to my home page I can choose whether I
want the Pagination options to be at the
| | 05:38 |
top or the bottom.
Its hard to see right now because I don't
| | 05:41 |
have many posts.
But if I go into Settings and Reading,
| | 05:45 |
I'll open it in a different tab here and
then I'll change Blog pages show at most
| | 05:52 |
maybe five posts.
You'll see that when I reload this page,
| | 05:58 |
because there are more than five polls, I
get this link to older entries, and if I
| | 06:03 |
went to older entries, you see I get a
link to newer entries.
| | 06:08 |
This is the pagination, and here I can
choose whether I want the pagination to be
| | 06:12 |
on the top or on the bottom.
And I can do this type of behavior for all
| | 06:17 |
the different sections on my sites.
Here I can pick search section maybe, and
| | 06:22 |
change the order here.
So here you see you have a search heading
| | 06:24 |
and then the loop and then the pagination.
So I could change it like this, or I could
| | 06:28 |
move it down like this.
And I can really configure the layout.
| | 06:32 |
The one thing that you have to notice is
this word, the Loop.
| | 06:36 |
You keep seeing the loop and required.
In WordPress, the Loop is the function
| | 06:41 |
that goes through the content and displays
it.
| | 06:43 |
So anytime you see the Loop It means, this
is where the actual post content will appear.
| | 06:47 |
That's also why it's required, because
without the Loop, there really is nothing
| | 06:51 |
to show.
So here you can play around with these
| | 06:53 |
different pages, and figure out what you
want to display and how you want to
| | 06:57 |
display it.
Under layout editor you can choose the
| | 07:01 |
layout of different pages.
So here you see we have the home template,
| | 07:04 |
and the current layout is one right
sidebar.
| | 07:07 |
So if you look at the home page, you see
we currently have one right sidebar.
| | 07:11 |
I can change this, I can say I want one
left side bar instead and when I reload my
| | 07:16 |
page, the side bar has jumped to the left.
Now the really neat thing here is, I can
| | 07:22 |
do this for each individual template.
So as you can see this was the home
| | 07:25 |
template, I can now go down to the post
template and say for posts I don't want
| | 07:29 |
the side bar, I want full width.
And now if I go to posts, you'll see
| | 07:37 |
there's no side bar.
I can also change it so the side bar's on
| | 07:40 |
the right and reload it again.
And now the side bar's on the right.
| | 07:46 |
So by changing these settings for each of
the individual template pages, I can
| | 07:50 |
change the layouts of different pages.
And when I work with, in combination with
| | 07:55 |
the template setup, I can truly customize
each individual section of the site.
| | 07:59 |
The final section is custom code.
And this is where you would add any custom
| | 08:03 |
CSS or you would add any header or footer
scripts.
| | 08:07 |
That means if you want to change the look
of the site, maybe want to add a new
| | 08:12 |
feature, if you want to change some sort
of styling element, you can do it here
| | 08:15 |
without having to work with the actual
themed files.
| | 08:19 |
This is a non-destructive way of changing
the quote of your site.
| | 08:22 |
The Custom CSS allows you to mess with,
well, the CSS of the site just as you
| | 08:27 |
would if had a child theme.
The header scripts and footer scripts
| | 08:30 |
allow you to insert scripts that will then
run on the site.
| | 08:33 |
This is what you commonly do when you add
things like Google tracking, or add sense code.
| | 08:38 |
You need to add scripts at the top or the
bottom of the site.
| | 08:42 |
The general rule I would say is to add all
these scripts into the footer, because you
| | 08:46 |
want the site to load before it loads the
scripts, because in some cases Java
| | 08:50 |
scripts will slow down your site, but in
some cases you need to add them in the top too.
| | 08:54 |
So this is where you would have them.
This is done in place of messing with the
| | 08:58 |
code itself.
So instead of creating a child theme, you
| | 09:01 |
just add the script here and you have the
same output.
| | 09:06 |
The final, and maybe most important
section of the TrulyMinimal settings is
| | 09:10 |
found all the way at the bottom of the
page.
| | 09:12 |
Here you have a button that says restore
settings to default.
| | 09:16 |
So if you make changes to your site, and
it turns out that you broke something, or
| | 09:20 |
you don't want the changes the way they
are right now.
| | 09:23 |
You can click on this button and restore
everything to default.
| | 09:26 |
Just remember when you restore it to
default you are setting everything back to
| | 09:30 |
zero and you will lose all of your
configurations.
| | 09:32 |
This is an irreversible function meaning
when you click that button the truly
| | 09:37 |
minimal logo will reappear, all your fonts
will be reset to the default and all your
| | 09:41 |
layouts will be reset.
Only do it if you make a big mistake or if
| | 09:45 |
you want to start over from scratch.
The custom theme settings ensure the
| | 09:49 |
minimal give you ample room to change the
look and feel of your site.
| | 09:53 |
I urge you to take some time to experiment
and see what works best for you.
| | 09:57 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| TrulyMinimal Advertising settings| 00:00 |
One unusual feature built into
TrulyMinimal is Advanced Ad Management.
| | 00:05 |
In most cases, ads have to be managed
through a plug in, but truly minimal has
| | 00:10 |
ads built right in.
This means, you can include advertising
| | 00:13 |
into your site in a seamless way.
The Ad Management in truly minimal is also
| | 00:18 |
quite advanced, leaving you with lots of
room to customize and play with the options.
| | 00:23 |
Before building ads, I need to have a plan
of where I want to place them.
| | 00:27 |
Looking at the site, what I want to do is
place two side-by-side ads here in the
| | 00:31 |
side bar.
I want them to be the 125 by 125 size, and
| | 00:35 |
I want it to appear side-by-side.
I already have the graphics for it, so all
| | 00:39 |
that's left to do is create the actual
ads.
| | 00:41 |
Now, to create an ad, I first have to
create an ad zone.
| | 00:44 |
So first, I'll go to Manage Zones and
create a New Add Zone.
| | 00:49 |
So here, I'll call it sidebar 2x and then
125x125.
| | 00:54 |
That describes the zone really well.
Next, I have to decide the maximum number
| | 00:59 |
of ads for this zone, because I can make a
zone, and then attribute a 100 ads to it,
| | 01:05 |
but I don't want all the 100 ads to appear
at the same time.
| | 01:07 |
So here, I set a number, and I'm going to
set that number to two, because I want
| | 01:11 |
there to be two ads one next to the other.
Under display mode, I get to choose how I
| | 01:16 |
want to display the ads, either based on
the latest ad, or a random setting.
| | 01:20 |
So if you, let's say you have two maximum
spots, but you have four ads and they
| | 01:25 |
should get equal placement, you can set it
to random, and then they will all randomly
| | 01:29 |
be given placement.
Format is the most important setting here.
| | 01:33 |
Under format you select the sizes of each
of the ads, and here you have all the
| | 01:37 |
standard sizes for ads, so you have
different horizontal ones, different
| | 01:41 |
vertical ones, and different square ones.
I'm going to select the 125 by 125 button,
| | 01:46 |
and you'll notice if you've ever worked
with Google AdSense or any other kind of
| | 01:49 |
advertising network, but these are all the
same sizes that they provide.
| | 01:53 |
And that's because you can add Google
AdSense ads in using this feature.
| | 01:57 |
Finally, I can add a description if I want
to, I'm not going to do that, I'm simply
| | 02:01 |
going to click Add New Zone.
If you're familiar with WordPress, you'll
| | 02:06 |
find that this looks awfully familiar, and
that's because it is.
| | 02:10 |
Zone Management under Advertising is just
a taxonomy to the custom pulse type that
| | 02:15 |
is ads.
So, Zone Management looks exactly like
| | 02:19 |
categories or tags, because it is just
like categories and tags.
| | 02:23 |
So, you basically just created a category,
that you can now attribute ads to.
| | 02:28 |
That means, the next step is to create two
ads.
| | 02:31 |
So, I'll go to Manage Ads and now I'm
going to first create one ad and then the
| | 02:35 |
second one.
So, I'll call this ad Lynda Black, because
| | 02:40 |
this going to be the black logo for my ad.
Then I have to add HTML code, and here I
| | 02:45 |
can either put in my own HTML code or I
can put in Google AdSense code if that's
| | 02:50 |
what I want.
But in this case, I want to just have an
| | 02:53 |
image that links to something specific, so
I'm going to grab this link an image
| | 02:57 |
example code here.
And I want this to link out to a different
| | 03:03 |
window, so that people don't go away from
my site.
| | 03:05 |
I'm going to go into the a tag and just
add target equals underscore blank end quote.
| | 03:16 |
And you notice that, in place of the link
it just says pound link pound and in place
| | 03:20 |
of image it just says pound image pound.
That's because I'm now going to upload an
| | 03:25 |
image and then add a link manually, and
this image and this link are the ones that
| | 03:30 |
are going to be inserted here.
So I'll click Upload Image, find my Lynda
| | 03:34 |
Black logo, It gets uploaded into the
system, then I'm going to go to the link,
| | 03:39 |
and pick what link I want.
So, I want lynda.com.
| | 03:45 |
And now that I both a link and an image, I
can just decide for how long I want to
| | 03:49 |
display this ad, and you can see by
default, it's set to one full year, but I
| | 03:52 |
can change this to anytime I want.
I have to activate that, by default accept
| | 03:57 |
a yes.
But I can also deactivate it if I want to
| | 03:59 |
hide it for a bit.
I can choose if I want a maximum number of clicks.
| | 04:04 |
If you leave it empty, it will just keep
displaying.
| | 04:06 |
But if you set it to for example, a
hundred, then once it's gotten a hundred
| | 04:10 |
clicks the ad will go away.
And I can also do the same for maximum
| | 04:13 |
number of use.
Finally, I have to select an ad zone, so
| | 04:16 |
here I only have one ad zone.
I'm going to apply it to the side bar 2x
| | 04:20 |
125 by 125, and as you can see this is a
125 by 125 ad zone.
| | 04:26 |
And now click Save Ad, and the ad is
saved, so now we have lynda black.
| | 04:33 |
Now, I'm going to create just another one
that's exactly the same.
| | 04:37 |
It's just Lynda Yellow.
I'll put in the same code, make the same
| | 04:46 |
alteration, upload image, and this time
I'll pick this yellow image.
| | 04:54 |
The link goes in the same place, activate
yes.
| | 05:01 |
No maximum clicks, no maximum use, and I
set the same zone, and click Save at again.
| | 05:10 |
I now have two ads, they are both applied
to the same zone, but if I go to my site
| | 05:15 |
and reload the page, you'll see nothing
changed.
| | 05:19 |
That's because now I need to add the ads
to the side bar.
| | 05:23 |
To go that, I have to go to Appearance and
Widgets, and in Widgets you'll see I now
| | 05:28 |
have a set of new widgets that are called
Truly Minimal, and then they have
| | 05:33 |
different options.
I'm going to cover this later in the
| | 05:36 |
course, but for now I'm just going to grab
the Truly Minimal Ads Widget.
| | 05:39 |
Place it directly under search and here
you see I can show a title for it.
| | 05:44 |
I can also pick what ad zone I want.
So, here I'm going to pick the side bar zone.
| | 05:49 |
And if you noticed you can also pick
individual ads if you want to, but I'm
| | 05:53 |
going to have a side bar zone, and now
click Save.
| | 05:55 |
Now, we're going to reload the front page,
you'll see both my ads appear.
| | 06:01 |
That means everything is working properly,
but you don't just have to ad widgets into
| | 06:06 |
the side bar.
So go back to your ads, and go into a
| | 06:11 |
single ad.
You'll see that you can also add any
| | 06:14 |
individual ad.
Both in your posts or pages by copying out
| | 06:19 |
this short code and pasting it in anywhere
in your content.
| | 06:21 |
Or directly in your theme by copying out
this code and placing it in your theme code.
| | 06:27 |
Or you can even do the same with the
zones.
| | 06:30 |
So, you can go into a single zone.
And here you'll find the short code to
| | 06:35 |
place the zone in any post or page.
And you'll find the PHP code to place the
| | 06:41 |
zone in any theme area.
That means you can place any ad you want
| | 06:45 |
or ad zone you want, anywhere on your site
at any time.
| | 06:49 |
With truly minimal, you have the option of
placing ads all over your site.
| | 06:54 |
I say option, because I'm urging you to
not go overboard with ads.
| | 06:59 |
Too many ads distract from your content
and makes your site less interesting to visit.
| | 07:04 |
Use them sparingly and stategically.
| | 07:07 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| TrulyMinimal custom widgets| 00:00 |
TrulyMinimal comes with a set of custom
Widgets you can use in your sidebar.
| | 00:04 |
You got a preview of this in the previous
movie when I pulled in the TrulyMinimal
| | 00:09 |
Ads Widget and add that to the sidebar to
Add Ads.
| | 00:13 |
Now we'll take a look at the other widgets
that come with TrulyMinimal.
| | 00:16 |
You'll notice that in addition to your
regular widget that come with WordPress,
| | 00:19 |
such as Archives, Calendar, Recent Post,
and Recent Comments.
| | 00:23 |
We now have a set of extra Widgets.
They all start with Truly Minimal, and
| | 00:27 |
here you have TrulyMinimal About US,
TrulyMinimal Ads, TrulyMinimal Latest
| | 00:32 |
Comments, Latest Posts, Popular Posts,
Random Posts, Search, and Tags.
| | 00:39 |
So why would you want to have separate
Widgets that often do the same as the
| | 00:44 |
default Widgets that come in WordPress?
Well if we put them side by side you can
| | 00:47 |
see the difference.
So I already have the Recent Posts widget
| | 00:51 |
in my sidebar.
So let's also grab the TrulyMinimal Latest
| | 00:54 |
Posts and put it directly underneath.
Without making any configurations, I'm
| | 00:58 |
going to go back to the site, reload it
and we can see the difference between the two.
| | 01:04 |
When I scroll down you'll see here we have
the standard widget from WordPress.
| | 01:08 |
It looks fine, and then underneath we have
the widget that comes with truly minimal,
| | 01:12 |
and you'll see the styling is somewhat
different.
| | 01:15 |
You have the date here at the front and
then when you hover over you get the
| | 01:18 |
underlines effect, whereas if you hover
over these they turn blue.
| | 01:22 |
So why would you have these two different
widgets?
| | 01:24 |
Well this is purely a styling issue.
The TrulyMinimal widget is styled
| | 01:30 |
specifically to fit with this theme.
So, it has the overall design of the rest
| | 01:35 |
of the theme.
Whereas, the default WordPress widget does not.
| | 01:38 |
So, if you're going to use TrulyMinimal
and you're going to use the latest posts
| | 01:42 |
widget, or the latest commons widgets or
one of the other widgets.
| | 01:46 |
I would recommend using the TrulyMinimal
widget when it's available.
| | 01:50 |
Simply because the styling matches your
site better.
| | 01:53 |
You also have the About Us widget that I
can pull that up and place it at the top here.
| | 01:57 |
And you'll see this works exactly like a
text widget, but the intention is for you
| | 02:02 |
to put in an About Us message here.
So, you put a welcome message that
| | 02:07 |
introduces people to who you are and what
you do.
| | 02:11 |
And of course, you have the popular posts
widget, and the random posts widget.
| | 02:15 |
Now, I wouldn't recommend having both
latest posts and random posts, but maybe
| | 02:20 |
you should have both popular posts and
random posts instead.
| | 02:23 |
So that when people come into the site,
they can both see what everyone is reading.
| | 02:27 |
And also just get introduced to new stuff
they maybe would have never seen otherwise.
| | 02:32 |
Just like with the regular WordPress
Widgets.
| | 02:34 |
These widgets have custom settings built
in.
| | 02:37 |
So, let's say I want to pull them in.
So I'll just dump out all the ones I don't
| | 02:41 |
want first.
Then I'll put in Popular Posts, and Random Posts.
| | 02:48 |
And as you can see for each of them, I can
change the title, and I can also change
| | 02:52 |
the number of pulses.
Now that I've added the widgets I want,
| | 02:58 |
you can see that by using the TrulyMinimal
Widgets in place of the Standard WordPress Widgets.
| | 03:03 |
I get a look that's more consistent
throughout the site.
| | 03:06 |
Of course you don't have to use these
widgets.
| | 03:08 |
But, if you want the look to be
consistent, and you want all these color
| | 03:12 |
changes and everything to carry over, this
is what you should do.
| | 03:16 |
Using the TrulyMinimal Widgets in place of
the standard WordPress Widgets ensures a
| | 03:21 |
visual consistency throughout your site.
Just make sure you don't end up with a
| | 03:25 |
case of SOS Sidebar Overload Syndrome.
Think about how your site will look, when
| | 03:31 |
someone visits a short post with a long
sidebar.
| | 03:34 |
And also consider what happens when people
visit a site using a mobile device.
| | 03:39 |
A well thought out sidebar with limited
info is more valuable than one cluttered
| | 03:43 |
with content.
| | 03:44 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Things to keep in mind when using TrulyMinimal| 00:00 |
TrulyMinimal is a powerful theme that
allows you great customization while at
| | 00:05 |
the same time retaining this very
simplistic minimalist look.
| | 00:10 |
You can change your header image, you can
change your fonts and your font sizes and colors.
| | 00:14 |
And you can customize many other aspects
of your site to make it a truly personal
| | 00:18 |
experience of your visitors.
Before you start using this theme, there
| | 00:22 |
are a few things I want you to keep in
mind.
| | 00:24 |
First and foremost, you have to remember
that this theme does not have post formats.
| | 00:30 |
So if you are migrating from a theme that
was using post formats to the truly
| | 00:34 |
minimal theme, you may have to revisit
some of your posts.
| | 00:37 |
You'll remember from earlier in the
course, I showed you how to add a video
| | 00:41 |
with the video post format, and also a
post status with the status format.
| | 00:46 |
But you see here, in TrulyMinimal, both of
these look kind of strange.
| | 00:50 |
The Video, because you don't see the
video, and the post Status, because it
| | 00:54 |
just looks like the shortest post anyone
ever wrote.
| | 00:57 |
So in the case of having status updates,
and also video posts and other elements
| | 01:01 |
that relied on heavily on specific post
formats.
| | 01:05 |
You need to revisit those posts and first
ask the question, does this even belong on
| | 01:09 |
my site?
In the case of the Status, it does not,
| | 01:13 |
and in the case of Videos, how do I change
this to make it more appealing?
| | 01:17 |
For this post, I would either have to add
a feature image to make it more appealing.
| | 01:20 |
Or I could change the layout of the page
so that it displays the entire post and
| | 01:25 |
not just the excerpt.
There's one extra feature in this theme
| | 01:29 |
that I haven't addressed and I'll show it
to you now.
| | 01:32 |
You notice that the theme has a white
background, and the backgrounds bounced
| | 01:36 |
across the entire site.
Well, you can change the background color.
| | 01:38 |
And because you have full control over the
typography settings found under the
| | 01:43 |
toolbar here, under Typography.
You can also change the color of the font,
| | 01:47 |
meaning you can change the look of the
entire site by just swapping out the colors.
| | 01:51 |
To show you how effective it is, I'm
going to go to the theme customizer here
| | 01:55 |
under the site name and Customize, and
drop down Colors.
| | 02:00 |
I'm going to open this color changer and
start dragging the mouse around.
| | 02:04 |
I'll just pick a color here, you'll see
that I can change this to any color.
| | 02:09 |
And you'll notice that there's some colors
that actually look great on the site and a
| | 02:14 |
lot of colors that look absolutely
terrible on the site.
| | 02:17 |
But, you can see how you can find a color
that really works for you.
| | 02:19 |
And then based on that color you can then
change the font color to match and the
| | 02:25 |
entire site will look completely
different.
| | 02:27 |
Is if you pick a color, like black, like
orange, like anything else, and then
| | 02:33 |
change the fonts accordingly.
You can make a site that ends up looking
| | 02:37 |
completely different from all other sites
that use the exact same theme.
| | 02:42 |
In short, but knowing what your theme can
do, and understanding all the
| | 02:46 |
customization options.
You'll be able to create a theme that's
| | 02:49 |
fully customized to your specific needs.
And will be entirely unique from every
| | 02:54 |
other sites that uses the same theme.
| | 02:56 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Using ReciPress to Add RecipesInstalling the ReciPress plugin| 00:00 |
A key feature in many food blogs is the
posting of recipes.
| | 00:04 |
This is also a great way to keep people
coming back to your blog and maybe even contributing.
| | 00:09 |
After all, who doesn't want a great recipe
for a tasty treat.
| | 00:13 |
Here I'm going to make a slight departure
from the regular format of this course series.
| | 00:18 |
Rather than showing you another theme, I'm
going to show you a plugin created
| | 00:22 |
specifically to add advanced recipes to
your site in an easy way.
| | 00:26 |
This plugin, called ReciPress, was created
by Tammy Hart, and is in a constant state
| | 00:32 |
of development.
ReciPress works with most themes, but
| | 00:36 |
occasionally it causes weird issues, so
test it extensively before deploying it.
| | 00:41 |
You can find all the information you need
about ReciPress on this website recipress.com.
| | 00:47 |
And this theme is also available from the
WordPress theme directory.
| | 00:51 |
As you can see, they're working on a Pro
version of the ReciPress plugin where you
| | 00:56 |
can add extra add-ons and new features.
But the free version of the ReciPress
| | 01:01 |
plugin is pretty good, and as you'll see
is very effective to post recipes.
| | 01:06 |
To use ReciPress you first have to install
it, and since it's available directly from
| | 01:11 |
the WordPress plugin directory, we can do
it from within WordPress.
| | 01:15 |
So I'm going to go to my sites, go to the
back end.
| | 01:18 |
Go to Plugins and click Add New, from here
all I have to do is search for ReciPress,
| | 01:28 |
click Search Plugins.
And the first plugin that appears is the
| | 01:32 |
one I want.
You'll also notice that there are already
| | 01:35 |
several extensions to ReciPress available
and there are more coming.
| | 01:39 |
So this is a very popular plugin that's in
high demand and more stuff will be coming
| | 01:43 |
down the pipe.
I'm going to install the plugins, I'll
| | 01:46 |
click Install Now.
Yes, I am sure I want to install it.
| | 01:50 |
The plug in gets downloaded and installed
into the site and now all that's left is
| | 01:54 |
to click activate plug in.
When you activate ReciPress, you get a new
| | 01:59 |
menu item onto your Admin menu all the way
down there at the bottom called ReciPress.
| | 02:04 |
And this is where you manage all the
options for the plugin.
| | 02:08 |
So far we haven't added any recipes yet.
So you can't see the output.
| | 02:12 |
But as we move forward, we'll start adding
recipes and you'll see how this plugin
| | 02:17 |
works, and why it's so great for posting
recipes.
| | 02:19 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Configuring ReciPress options| 00:00 |
As with most plugins, ReciPress can be
configured to integrate seamlessly with
| | 00:04 |
your sites.
The ReciPress options are found in your
| | 00:07 |
admin panel, at the very bottom, under
ReciPress and ReciPress options.
| | 00:11 |
From here, you can control how ReciPress
interacts with your post and pages, and
| | 00:16 |
also how you want to display it.
So, let's just take it from the top.
| | 00:20 |
First off, you're asked how you want to
output the recipe.
| | 00:23 |
By default it's set to automatically
output your recipe.
| | 00:26 |
That means the recipe will always appear
directly under the post content, but you
| | 00:31 |
can put more content under the recipe.
If you want to put more content under the
| | 00:36 |
recipe or you want to place the recipe on
top of your post or somewhere else.
| | 00:40 |
You need to check the No here and then put
in the recipe short code in your posts instead.
| | 00:46 |
And when I say, put in the recipe short
code, I literally just mean putting in
| | 00:50 |
square bracket recipe end square bracket.
And the recipe that's associated with the
| | 00:55 |
current post will then display where you
put that short code in.
| | 00:59 |
If you decide to change this remember that
this is a global setting.
| | 01:03 |
Meaning all your recipes will either
automatically display or not automatically display.
| | 01:08 |
So if you had it automatic, and then you
decide to change it at some point you have
| | 01:11 |
to go through all of your posts that have
recipes and then put in this short cut.
| | 01:16 |
Next you have Output Recipe On and by
default the recipes only output in the
| | 01:21 |
single pulse page.
Meaning you'll only see the recipes when
| | 01:24 |
you're in a single post.
However, you can check Home Page or Latest
| | 01:28 |
Posts Page.
Archive from Category Pages or Search
| | 01:31 |
Results Pages too, if you want to display
the full recipe in these pages.
| | 01:35 |
Just keep in mind that if you do that,
your adding a lot of extra content to your
| | 01:39 |
index pages.
So, I would recommend not doing that.
| | 01:42 |
You can choose what theme you want to use,
ReciPress comes with three themes, you
| | 01:46 |
have Light theme, the Dark theme and the
ReciPress theme.
| | 01:50 |
Which has this square pattern in the
background.
| | 01:53 |
I recommend you start with a Light theme
and then once you publish a post, with a
| | 01:57 |
recipe in it.
You can try to experiment by switching
| | 02:00 |
these, and see what works best for your
theme.
| | 02:03 |
You can choose whether or not you want to
use the featured image, as the recipe image.
| | 02:07 |
And you'll see when we create a recipe,
what this means.
| | 02:10 |
When you create a recipe, the recipe
display itself will have an image in it
| | 02:14 |
that features that recipe.
So if you turn this to yes, the featured
| | 02:18 |
image for the post will also be added to
the recipe.
| | 02:21 |
If you set it to no, you can use a
different image, or not have an image at all.
| | 02:25 |
And if you choose yes, you also need to
pick which image size you want.
| | 02:29 |
By default it's set to large, but you can
also pick thumbnail, medium or full.
| | 02:34 |
And these sizes are the standard WordPress
sizes that are controlled under Settings
| | 02:38 |
and Media.
And again they are global settings.
| | 02:40 |
So if you decide to change these under
media, your changing the settings for the
| | 02:44 |
entire site.
Scrolling down you have recipe input.
| | 02:48 |
This is where you decide what post type
has recipes in it.
| | 02:52 |
By default, it's set to post, because
that's the only post type you have.
| | 02:55 |
But if you decide to create a custom theme
or add a custom post type to your site,
| | 03:00 |
for example, a recipe post type.
You can change this and put in the name of
| | 03:04 |
the post type you want to use.
But for most people, post is correct.
| | 03:09 |
You can also choose whether you want to
use these custom taxonomies that come with ReciPress.
| | 03:13 |
They are Cuisine, Course and Skill Levels.
So you can toggle these on and off
| | 03:17 |
depending on how much information you want
to display.
| | 03:20 |
And finally you can choose whether you
want to show a cost of recipe field.
| | 03:24 |
By default it's set to no, but you can set
it to yes, and then you can actually say
| | 03:27 |
how much a specific recipe costs to make.
At the bottom you have a Say Thanks
| | 03:32 |
section, and this is very common for free
plugins.
| | 03:35 |
Here you can choose to leave a plugin
credit at the bottom of the plugin,
| | 03:39 |
telling people that you are using the
ReciPress plugin and giving them more
| | 03:42 |
information about it.
You can also choose to give the developer
| | 03:45 |
a little bit of money as a donation for
building this plugin for free and giving
| | 03:50 |
it to you for free.
So if you're going to use this plug-in,
| | 03:53 |
and you feel it is of value to your site.
I suggest donating a bit of money to the
| | 03:58 |
developer to say thanks for doing the
work.
| | 04:01 |
Once you made your changes and you're
happy with the settings, click Save Options.
| | 04:06 |
And remember that just like everything
else in WordPress, these settings can
| | 04:11 |
always be changed at a later time.
So if you chose something now that turns
| | 04:14 |
out it doesn't work, you can go back and
switch it later.
| | 04:18 |
Understanding the options or settings for
a plugin is integral to being able to use
| | 04:22 |
it properly.
ReciPress Options are straightforward and
| | 04:25 |
gives you control over where and how your
recipes are displayed.
| | 04:29 |
Make sure to come back and review these
settings when you have started publishing recipes.
| | 04:33 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Configuring ReciPress taxonomies| 00:00 |
Organization is important, especially when
you publish many items that people need to
| | 00:05 |
be able to sort through.
The reason you should use ReciPress,
| | 00:08 |
rather than just post your recipes
straight in your blog post.
| | 00:12 |
Is precisely because of how it organizes
your recipes through the use of custom taxonomies.
| | 00:18 |
A taxonomy is a sorting system.
In WordPress, you have two default taxonomies.
| | 00:23 |
They're both found under Posts and they
are Categories and Tags.
| | 00:27 |
ReciPress introduces four new ones,
Ingredients, which are similar to Tags,
| | 00:32 |
and Cuisines, Courses and the Skill
Levels, that are all similar to categories.
| | 00:38 |
Before you create recipes, you should
think about how you want to structure
| | 00:42 |
these taxonomies.
And what options you want to include.
| | 00:45 |
Management of ReciPress taxonomies is no
different from managing categories and tags.
| | 00:51 |
They just concern different subjects, so
let's take a look at these recipes, so
| | 00:55 |
I'll go to Ingredients first.
As you can see, because we haven't added
| | 01:00 |
any recipes yet we don't have any
ingredients.
| | 01:02 |
But this is where you would see a tag
cloud of all the different ingredients you
| | 01:06 |
could add, so this is how it would work.
When you add a new recipe, you add
| | 01:10 |
ingredients to the recipe let's say butter
and flour and milk.
| | 01:15 |
When you do that you are creating new
ingredients in this list and that means
| | 01:19 |
the next time you add the same ingredient,
the two recipes will be related to each
| | 01:24 |
other through that ingredient.
That also means someone could come to the
| | 01:27 |
site and say, I want to see every recipe
that has butter in it, or flour in it, or
| | 01:32 |
milk in it.
And you can even go into this ingredients
| | 01:35 |
list and see how many recipes have a
certain ingredient in them.
| | 01:40 |
The same goes for cuisines, courses, and
skill levels, but here you'll see the
| | 01:44 |
developer has already added a series of
different taxonomies for you.
| | 01:48 |
So, you can see under Cuisines we already
have a long list of different types of
| | 01:52 |
cuisines that you can choose from.
If you want to add more cuisines let's say
| | 01:56 |
you want to add Thai.
You can simply type in the name, the Slug
| | 02:01 |
will automatically be generated and if you
want to you can add a description.
| | 02:05 |
When you click on Add New Cuisine, it gets
added to the list and now it becomes an
| | 02:09 |
option when you create a new recipe.
The same goes for courses.
| | 02:13 |
Here you have a set of standard courses,
Appetizer, Breakfast, Dessert, and so on.
| | 02:19 |
But if you feel that one course is
missing, you can simply add it by typing
| | 02:23 |
in the new course, and the same goes for
skill levels.
| | 02:26 |
Here you'll see you have a set of standard
skill levels, but if you feel a skill
| | 02:31 |
level is missing, you can add a new one.
Once you start adding recipes and here
| | 02:36 |
you'll see, I've already cheated an added
a couple.
| | 02:38 |
You'll start seeing the popular skill
levels, or the popular courses, or the
| | 02:42 |
popular cuisines, or the popular
ingredients.
| | 02:45 |
And these are basically tag clouds that
show you how important certain elements
| | 02:49 |
are to the other.
So, if you go in here and you see that
| | 02:52 |
easy is much bigger than the other skill
levels.
| | 02:54 |
It means that you're currently posting a
lot more easy recipes than hard recipes.
| | 02:59 |
And if you're targeting an advanced crowd,
that means you may want to change your
| | 03:04 |
behavior and change what kind of recipes
you're posting.
| | 03:08 |
Once you understand how these taxonomies
work and you've got them sorted out, we'll
| | 03:12 |
take a look at how to post an actual
recipe into the site.
| | 03:16 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a new recipe| 00:00 |
Now, that you have a theme that makes your
food blog look great and appetizing and
| | 00:05 |
you have the ReciPress plugin installed
your ready to start posting recipes on
| | 00:09 |
your site.
To do that we first have to create a new
| | 00:12 |
post so I'm going to go an create a new
post and I'll give the post a title recipe.
| | 00:19 |
And then the title of the recipe.
So I'm going to go and grab that from a
| | 00:22 |
sheet card here, which is a complete
recipe for a new dish.
| | 00:26 |
And I'll paste it in here.
Then I have to set a category for my recipe.
| | 00:32 |
And I'll set the category to recipes.
And then I have to put in some post content.
| | 00:37 |
Now the post content will appear above the
recipe, because that's the setting I've
| | 00:41 |
set, Recipe Press to function by.
So I'll put in post content, and here I
| | 00:45 |
can put in anything I want: text, images,
videos, or whatever.
| | 00:48 |
And then the recipe will appear after
that.
| | 00:50 |
I think I'm just going to say (SOUND).
Now, that I have my post, it's time to add
| | 00:56 |
the recipe.
When you install ReciPress, it adds a new
| | 01:00 |
field to your post editor.
It's down here and it says Recipe and here
| | 01:04 |
if you check Add a recipe?
You get a series of new fields where you
| | 01:08 |
can include information about your recipe.
So here we're going to start by adding the
| | 01:12 |
recipe title.
And if you want to, you can also add a
| | 01:15 |
recipe summary.
I'm not going to do that right now.
| | 01:18 |
Then we have to set the taxonomies for our
cuisines, courses and skill levels.
| | 01:22 |
And here we can simply use the drop-down
to find the correct cuisine.
| | 01:26 |
The correct course, and the correct skill
level, and if you're missing a cuisine, or
| | 01:32 |
a course, or a skill level, you can click
on the Manage Cuisines, Courses, or Skill
| | 01:37 |
Level links.
Just remember that if you click on these,
| | 01:40 |
you are taken off this page and on to the
management page for that taxonomy.
| | 01:44 |
Once its taxonomies are set, you can set
the yield.
| | 01:48 |
In this case we're making six cuppies.
You can set the serving, so this will be
| | 01:53 |
one serving for each.
You can set the prep time.
| | 01:56 |
You can set the cook time and if you want
to you can also set a different time.
| | 02:02 |
These will then be calculated together by
the plugin and then we get to the ingredients.
| | 02:08 |
Here you will add each of your ingredients
in turn and as you add them they will
| | 02:12 |
become taxonomy items.
So, people can sort based on them.
| | 02:16 |
So, let's take a look at our recipe.
Then here you'll see the ingredients are
| | 02:19 |
six to 12 slices of Prosciutto, so I'm
just going to copy that out because hard
| | 02:23 |
to spell.
So I'll say six to 12 slices.
| | 02:28 |
And then paste in Prosciutto.
If I want to I can also add extra notes to
| | 02:34 |
this but I'm not going to do that.
Then when I want to add another ingredient
| | 02:38 |
I simply click on the green plus button
and another ingredients is added.
| | 02:44 |
Then I have to add six eggs, so I'll say
six eggs, and I have to add salt and
| | 02:52 |
pepper, so I'll add those on separate
lines.
| | 02:54 |
Salt and pepper.
And as you add these ingredients in, each
| | 03:03 |
of them becomes their own taxonomy item.
Meaning that the next time you add a
| | 03:07 |
recipe that has an egg in it, it'll link
to this recipe because they both have
| | 03:12 |
eggs, and people can sort based on the
ingredient list.
| | 03:17 |
Now, that I have my ingredients in order I
can either leave them the way it is, or if
| | 03:20 |
I want to I can reorganize them simply by
dragging and dropping them like this.
| | 03:24 |
And then I can go down to Instructions.
Here I can give detailed instructions and
| | 03:31 |
even append images for each of the
instruction steps.
| | 03:35 |
So I'm going to go here and grab the first
instruction, copy it.
| | 03:40 |
Paste it in and then I'm going to add a
new instruction, I'll get this one.
| | 03:45 |
Paste it in, and in this case there's an
image, so I will go in, select the file,
| | 03:52 |
I'll upload that file.
I can decide what size of this image I
| | 03:57 |
want to use, I'm going to use the medium
size here.
| | 04:03 |
I'll click, use this image.
Then I can add another step.
| | 04:08 |
I'll copy out the step.
Paste it in.
| | 04:15 |
Add another step.
Copy this one out, and this one also has
| | 04:20 |
an image.
Paste it in.
| | 04:24 |
Add the image.
Click Use This Image.
| | 04:36 |
Now, that I have all the steps, I can
check that they are all in the correct
| | 04:39 |
order because these will be displayed in
the numbered list.
| | 04:42 |
And if they're not, I can grab any of the
steps.
| | 04:45 |
And place it in a different order if I
want to.
| | 04:49 |
And when I'm finished and I'm satisfied
that this is all correct, I'm going to go
| | 04:53 |
and set a featured image.
So I'll click Set Featured Image, I'll
| | 04:55 |
select one of the existing featured images
because as you can see, when you upload an
| | 05:00 |
image to the recipe, it's also uploaded in
to the media library for WordPress so you
| | 05:05 |
can use it.
So I want to use this as a featured image
| | 05:07 |
for the post, and this featured image will
now appear as the post featured image on
| | 05:12 |
the front page and as the featured image
for this recipe because that's what we set
| | 05:16 |
it as inside ReciPress.
And when I'm happy with everything, I'll
| | 05:21 |
click Publish.
Now, that we've created a recipe, we can
| | 05:25 |
take a look at what that looks like in the
post, so I'll click View Post.
| | 05:31 |
And here you see the recipe along with the
rest of the content.
| | 05:33 |
So here, we have the standard post
content, so here would be all your text
| | 05:37 |
and images and whatever.
And then we have the recipe.
| | 05:39 |
And you see the recipe is cornered off in
the separate box as the title, the yield,
| | 05:44 |
prep time, complete time.
It has each of the ingredients.
| | 05:48 |
And here you can see you can navigate
based on ingredients and sort through all
| | 05:52 |
the recipes.
And the below, you have full instructions
| | 05:55 |
in order.
So here we can see step number one,
| | 05:58 |
preheat oven, step number two, spray
muffing tin, and then you have the image.
| | 06:01 |
Step number three, line each cup with
Prosciutto.
| | 06:04 |
Step number four, add one egg and so on
and so on.
| | 06:07 |
And as you can see, the images are
integrated at each step and are easy to
| | 06:12 |
reorganize if you accidentally set it up
in the wrong order.
| | 06:15 |
Scrolling to the bottom, you have your
cuisine, you have your course, and your
| | 06:20 |
skill level.
And finally, the link to the ReciPress
| | 06:24 |
plugin because we chose to leave the Thank
You link in the plugin.
| | 06:29 |
Now that you have a recipe, you can also
add navigation for the people who visit
| | 06:32 |
the site in your sidebar.
Because ReciPress comes with additional widgets.
| | 06:38 |
So if I go up to the toolbar, and I go to
widgets.
| | 06:42 |
You can see that now we have two new
widgets.
| | 06:44 |
We have the Recent Recipes widget, and we
also have that ReciPress Terms widget, and
| | 06:49 |
that's the one I want to use because the
terms are taxonomies.
| | 06:53 |
So here I can use the Courses term.
I can use the Ingredients term, the
| | 06:58 |
Cuisines term, or the Skill Levels term.
So let's say I want to add cuisines.
| | 07:03 |
I can then choose to output it out as a
list or a cloud.
| | 07:06 |
I highly recommend using the list because
the clouds look really messy.
| | 07:09 |
So I'm going to click Save.
And now, when I go to the front page of my
| | 07:15 |
site, you'll see that here we have a nice
list of all our cuisines.
| | 07:19 |
And if I want to go a step further, I can
go back to my widgets, and I can change
| | 07:24 |
the title of this to.
And go back to the front page.
| | 07:31 |
And now we see your recipes cuisines and
here you can negative to all the posts
| | 07:37 |
that have a specific recipe cuisine in
them.
| | 07:40 |
So here, we see we have the recipe for Ham
and Egg Cuppies.
| | 07:43 |
And you see why it's so important to add
that featured image because you don't see
| | 07:47 |
the recipe but you see the end result.
And when you go in, you get the full recipe.
| | 07:53 |
Now, I think you understand the reason why
I want you to use a plugin like ReciPress
| | 07:58 |
to post your recipes.
It's because when you just use the regular
| | 08:02 |
post, you don't really have the control
you have with ReciPress.
| | 08:05 |
You don't have this layout and you don't
have these taxonomies to make it easy for
| | 08:10 |
people to find out what they're looking
for.
| | 08:12 |
And more importantly if you make a
mistake, you then have to go and re-edit
| | 08:16 |
the whole post or rewrite things.
Whereas in ReciPress, you can simply grab
| | 08:20 |
an item and reorganize it into the order
you like the most.
| | 08:23 |
Just keep one thing in mind.
For these recipes to display, Recipress
| | 08:28 |
has to be installed and activated.
If you deactivate ReciPress or uninstall,
| | 08:33 |
it the recipes won't display.
It doesn't mean they're gone.
| | 08:36 |
Because if you re-install ReciPress and
reactivate it, it will come back.
| | 08:40 |
It's just that as long as ReciPress is
deactivated, or not installed, you won't
| | 08:44 |
see them on your site.
| | 08:47 |
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ConclusionFood blogging and beyond!| 00:00 |
In this course, I've shown you how you can
make a great looking food blog using the
| | 00:04 |
Gallery, and TrulyMinimal themes.
And how you can add advanced recipe
| | 00:09 |
functionality to your food blog through
the ReciPress plugin.
| | 00:13 |
Now it's your turn to go out and create
your own food blog and share your love of
| | 00:17 |
everything culinary with the world.
But before you do so, I want to leave you
| | 00:21 |
with some tips on how you can expand your
skills for food blogging.
| | 00:25 |
Here are my recommended courses for
further exploration.
| | 00:28 |
First off, go check out the Food and Drink
photography course that will teach you how
| | 00:33 |
to take better pictures of food and drink.
This is tremendously important in food blogging.
| | 00:38 |
And doing photography in food blogging
right, is both easy and effective once you
| | 00:44 |
know how to do it.
This course is great, so go take it right away.
| | 00:47 |
You should also go check out these two
courses on Writing Articles.
| | 00:51 |
You have Writing Articles by Tom Geller
and also Writing Fundamentals, The Craft
| | 00:56 |
of Story by Lisa Cron.
These two courses will help you write
| | 01:00 |
better stories that are more appealing to
the people who visit your blog.
| | 01:03 |
Because since they're not eating the food
you are talking about, you need to make
| | 01:07 |
them feel like they're eating it through
your writing.
| | 01:10 |
To learn more about how to use WordPress,
I always recommend taking my WordPress
| | 01:15 |
Essential Training Course, even if you
think you already know WordPress.
| | 01:18 |
Because there might be something in there
that you've either forgotten or that you
| | 01:21 |
didn't know about.
If you want to go further and want to
| | 01:24 |
learn how to expand your theme and make it
more yours, you can go check out WordPress
| | 01:29 |
3, Building Child Themes.
Which shows you how to expand your theme
| | 01:33 |
and add new functionality to it.
And finally, I recommend you go check out
| | 01:37 |
the Improving SEO Using Accessibility
Techniques course.
| | 01:41 |
This is a developer course, but it gives
you an idea of how you can mark up your
| | 01:45 |
code in such a way that people have an
easier time finding it.
| | 01:49 |
And, in particular, it talks about how you
can mark up your images.
| | 01:52 |
So that people find your images easier on
the web and are able to understand them better.
| | 01:57 |
Whether you are creating a food blog to
publish review of local restaurants or you
| | 02:01 |
want to share your recipes with your
friends and family or the world.
| | 02:05 |
You'd now have all the components
necessary to be successful.
| | 02:09 |
All that's left is some great food.
| | 02:12 |
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