IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | Hi, I'm Morten Rand-Hendricksen, and welcome
to Start with a Theme: Video Blogs in WordPress.
| | 00:11 | In this course, I'll show you how you can
make a clean and responsive video blog with
| | 00:15 | WordPress using three different
themes for three different looks.
| | 00:20 | We'll start by looking at how to add
videos into blog posts with WordPress.
| | 00:25 | Then we'll look at how to use the default Twenty Twelve
theme to build a video blog with a modern minimalist look.
| | 00:34 | We'll switch to the one-column Origami theme to get a
different take on what WordPress sites can look like.
| | 00:40 | And finally, we'll explore the Sundance video
theme from Automatic and check out its hidden features.
| | 00:48 | Making a video blog with WordPress is now
easier than ever, so let's get cracking with
| | 00:53 | Start with a Theme: Video Blogs in WordPress.
| | 00:58 |
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| What you should know before starting this course| 00:00 | To take full advantage of this course, it's
important that you are familiar with WordPress
| | 00:05 | and also that you have a
WordPress site to work with.
| | 00:08 | If you don't already have a WordPress site
or if you're unfamiliar with WordPress,
| | 00:14 | I recommend you go and check out the
WordPress Essential Training course in the
| | 00:19 | lynda.com online training library first and
then come back to this course afterwards.
| | 00:24 | The WordPress Essential Training course
will not only help you understand how WordPress
| | 00:28 | works and show you all the ins and outs of
how to configure it and use it, but it will
| | 00:33 | also help you publish a WordPress site so that you
have something to work with when you watch this course.
| | 00:40 | In particular, you should pay
attention to Chapter 5 Creating Posts.
| | 00:45 | Here you'll get a full run through of not
only how to create posts, but also how to
| | 00:50 | add media elements like
images and videos to posts.
| | 00:54 | This is important because, in this course,
we'll be looking at how to add videos to the
| | 00:58 | course and how to configure
your sites to work with videos.
| | 01:02 | Even if you already know how to use WordPress, I
still recommend checking out WordPress Essential
| | 01:07 | Training, because there may be things in this
course that you're not aware of or there may be
| | 01:12 | things that you're aware
of but you simply forgot.
| | 01:16 | Once you have a clear understanding of how
WordPress works, how you can configure it,
| | 01:21 | how you can publish new content, and how you
can work with it, you're ready to embark on
| | 01:25 | Start with a Theme: Video Blogs in WordPress.
| | 01:30 |
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1. Setting Up WordPress as a Video BlogAdding video content from different services| 00:00 | WordPress can be used for
many interesting things.
| | 00:03 | The original purpose of WordPress was for
it to be an easy to use blogging platform.
| | 00:09 | And that's what we're going to use it for in
this course, albeit in a slightly different
| | 00:13 | capacity from what was
originally envisioned by its creators.
| | 00:18 | We're going to make a video blog.
| | 00:20 | What do I mean by a video blog?
I mean a blog where you post videos.
| | 00:24 | It could be videos of anything, videos you make
yourself or videos created by others and shared by you.
| | 00:31 | For this course, I'm going to make a video blog
featuring videos from lynda.com's YouTube Channel.
| | 00:38 | To make a video blog, you first need to understand how
to add videos from video sharing services into your blog.
| | 00:44 | With WordPress, that's about as
easy as it can get. Let's take a look.
| | 00:49 | Let's say I go to YouTube, and I found a video I
really want to share with the people who follow my blog.
| | 00:55 | This is quite normal because the whole
point of videos on YouTube is that you can grab
| | 01:00 | them and put them into your own blog, or you
can share them on Facebook or Twitter or whatever
| | 01:05 | so that the video goes viral.
| | 01:08 | So I find a video I like, and I want to put it on
my site, how do I do that? Well, let's take a look.
| | 01:14 | First, I'll go to the video itself.
| | 01:18 | Here's the video, and I'll make sure
that it works. It's a cool intro and stuff.
| | 01:26 | Now, I need to embed this video into my post.
| | 01:30 | The first thing I'm going to do
in WordPress is create a new post.
| | 01:34 | I can do that by going to Posts and click Add New, or
I can click New in the WordPress toolbar and select Post.
| | 01:41 | I need to give my post a title, so I'm going
to go to the YouTube video and grab the title
| | 01:47 | from the YouTube video,
copy it and then paste that in.
| | 01:51 | Of course, you can write
your own title if you want to.
| | 01:54 | I'm just being lazy, so I'm just
grabbing the title from the YouTube video.
| | 01:58 | Then I need to add the video
itself and here's the trick.
| | 02:02 | If you've been on the web for a while, you
know that in the past, to put a video into
| | 02:06 | your post, you had to go and find the embed
codes, you have to click on the Share button,
| | 02:10 | then you have to click on the Embed button,
and then you get this huge pile of code here,
| | 02:14 | and you copy that out and then you have to
decide of the video size, and it's quite cumbersome.
| | 02:20 | With WordPress, you don't
have to do any of that anymore.
| | 02:23 | If you're using YouTube or Vimeo or any of
other big video sharing sites, all you have
| | 02:29 | to do is grab the URL to the video, it looks
like this, watch?v= and then some random letters.
| | 02:37 | And if you see a longer one just take it all
the way up until the ampersand sign, you
| | 02:43 | get their YouTube link, copy it, go back into your
post, paste the link in, and that's all you have to do.
| | 02:54 | Now because this is a video blog, you should
really add some extra content to your post,
| | 02:59 | because if you're just posting videos,
people have no reason to see them.
| | 03:03 | So you should also put in some information
about what the video is or why you think people
| | 03:08 | should be watching it.
So I'll type in a little description here.
| | 03:13 | Once you put in all the text content you want, and you
have your video, you need to give your video a category.
| | 03:20 | So I'll create a new category here, and I'll
call it Creative Cloud. Click Add New Category.
| | 03:29 | I'll also give it some Tags, so I'll say adobe, news,
cloud, and then I can publish my post. I'll click Publish.
| | 03:40 | And when I click on View Post now, you will
see that even though in my post all I have
| | 03:46 | is the URL to the video, when we view the
post in the blog, you see the video play.
| | 03:56 | Cool, eh? Well, this is what's called oEmbed,
and oEmbed in WordPress supports a lot of
| | 04:06 | different formats, including YouTube and Vimeo.
| | 04:10 | So if you find a video, and it's supported
by oEmbed just try and copy the URL and paste
| | 04:15 | it in and see what happens? If it doesn't
work, you have to put in the old embed code,
| | 04:20 | but for most services, oEmbed works just fine.
| | 04:23 | As you can see, adding videos in
WordPress is a simple cut and paste operation.
| | 04:29 | In fact, it's so easy, the most
complicated part is finding great videos and figuring
| | 04:34 | out how you want to organize them and what
kind of information you want to attach to them.
| | 04:38 |
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| Exploring video hosting options| 00:00 | Before we dive deeper into video blogging,
let me briefly address a question a lot of
| | 00:05 | people ask, and I'm sure it's
at the back of your mind as well.
| | 00:09 | Where do I host my videos? Here's the thing,
video on the web is complicated.
| | 00:14 | There are many reasons for this, most notably
that video files are large and resource-heavy.
| | 00:20 | When someone watches a video on your site,
they're actually downloading a large file from a server.
| | 00:26 | That's not a problem when
one person watches one video.
| | 00:30 | But imagine what happens when a hundred
people watch the same video at the same time.
| | 00:35 | That means the server has to send the same
file to 100 different computers simultaneously.
| | 00:41 | Now multiply that by 10 or 100, and you see
how this can very quickly become a large problem.
| | 00:47 | Because video is complicated and resource-heavy,
there are specialized services out there that
| | 00:52 | help you host videos.
You have the free ones like YouTube here.
| | 00:57 | You have the premium ones like Vimeo, where
you can host some videos for free and then
| | 01:02 | you can pay for better options.
| | 01:05 | And you have the for pay ones
like VideoPress or Zencoder or Viddler.
| | 01:14 | What service fits your particular
purpose depends on your particular purpose.
| | 01:19 | If you're publishing free videos, and you
aim to have as many people as possible watch
| | 01:24 | them and share them, YouTube is your best bet.
| | 01:27 | But you have to remember, when you publish
videos on YouTube unless you turn comments
| | 01:32 | off, you're going to get a lot of garbage
comments because there's a lot of people on
| | 01:37 | YouTube who spend their days just
leaving garbage comments everywhere.
| | 01:42 | It's something that happens,
and you can't really control it.
| | 01:46 | If you have a more artistic or professional
flare, and you want to show off your talents,
| | 01:51 | Vimeo might be right for you.
| | 01:53 | Just remember that on Vimeo, they have
much stricter rules about what kind of content
| | 01:58 | can be placed in their system, and if you
break those rules, your videos will be taken
| | 02:02 | off, and you might lose your account.
| | 02:04 | So if you're going to use Vimeo, read up on what you're
allowed to publish before you start publishing your content.
| | 02:11 | If you want complete control, and you want
to restrict where your videos are displayed
| | 02:16 | so people can only access them from your
site when you want them to, a professional video
| | 02:21 | hosting service like VideoPress which is from
Automatic who creates WordPress or Zencoder,
| | 02:28 | which is another service that provides
really advanced video services or Viddler, which
| | 02:34 | is another one that also provides advanced
video services is probably the right option.
| | 02:40 | The only thing I strongly discourage you
from doing is hosting videos on your own server.
| | 02:46 | Like I said, they're resource-heavy and hard to work
with and they'll cause problems for you down the road.
| | 02:53 | To put it bluntly, you're better off using
a wheel someone else invented than trying
| | 02:57 | to cobble one together on your own.
But I digress, let's get down to business.
| | 03:02 |
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| Understanding what a theme is and how it works| 00:00 | Now that we have a populated and functioning site,
it's time to start working on the appearance of the site.
| | 00:07 | In WordPress the visual presence
of the site is controlled by themes.
| | 00:11 | Themes are clusters of template files, style
files, script files, and image files that together
| | 00:17 | create what you see when you
visit a WordPress-powered site.
| | 00:21 | The cool thing about how WordPress works is
that you can swap themes around without having
| | 00:26 | to worry about your content, that means
you can change the appearance of your site as
| | 00:31 | often as you like and just
keep publishing content as you go.
| | 00:35 | In this course, we'll look closely at
three themes that work well with video blogs.
| | 00:41 | They're very different and they provide
entirely different experiences for the visitors.
| | 00:45 | Before we get that far, let's take a look
at how themes work and how to manage them.
| | 00:51 | If you haven't worked with WordPress before,
and you haven't watched the WordPress Essential
| | 00:55 | Training course, I'll give you a
crash course in how to install themes.
| | 01:01 | If you go to WordPress, and you're logged
in, you can go to the back end by going to
| | 01:05 | the WordPress toolbar and selecting the
name of the site and just clicking on it.
| | 01:10 | This brings you to the back end of the site.
| | 01:12 | From here, you can go to Appearance and
Themes and see what themes are installed.
| | 01:18 | Depending on when you installed WordPress,
you'll have two or three default themes.
| | 01:24 | Usually you'll have two, Twenty Twelve and
Twenty Eleven, and you may also have another
| | 01:30 | one called Twenty Ten if you
installed WordPress a little while ago.
| | 01:35 | You can switch between these
themes simply by clicking on them.
| | 01:38 | Right now, the current them is Twenty Twelve.
| | 01:41 | If I click on Twenty Eleven--I'll just click on the big
screenshot here--I'm taken to what's called the Theme Customizer.
| | 01:49 | From here, I get a preview of what my
site looks like with this new theme.
| | 01:53 | So you can see here's the active content in the
new theme, and I can also make changes to my site.
| | 02:00 | I can use the Theme Customizer to change
the title of my site, I can change the Colors,
| | 02:10 | and I can change other Components.
In some cases, you have Layout options.
| | 02:14 | In other cases, you can change
the Color of the Font, and so on.
| | 02:19 | If I like what I see, I can click Save & Activate,
and now my site has changed from using Twenty
| | 02:24 | Twelve as a theme to using Twenty Eleven.
| | 02:28 | Now I can go look at my site by clicking
on the site name, and if I don't like what I
| | 02:33 | see, I can simply go back to the Admin panel,
go to Appearance again and Themes, scroll
| | 02:40 | down and just click Activate
under the Twenty Twelve theme.
| | 02:44 | Now when I go to the front page, you'll
see we have the original design again.
| | 02:49 | I can also add new themes.
| | 02:52 | I'll go to Appearance and Themes and click
Install Themes and from here, I can search
| | 02:57 | the extensive database of
available themes from wordpress.org.
| | 03:02 | You can see those themes if you go
to wordpress.org and click on Themes.
| | 03:09 | Here you have over 1,600 themes to choose from and all
these themes are also available from right inside WordPress.
| | 03:16 | You can also either search for themes or go
checkout the Featured themes, currently most
| | 03:22 | popular or look at the Newest
themes or Recently Updated themes.
| | 03:28 | If you find the theme you like, let's say
I want to use this Responsive theme here,
| | 03:32 | you can either Preview it, this gives you a
theme preview, so it's not using your site,
| | 03:37 | it's using a standard site, or you can click
Install Now, and WordPress will download the
| | 03:42 | package from the Internet and then unpack
it and install it, and now you can run your
| | 03:48 | live preview again to see what it looks like.
| | 03:52 | As you can see, the Responsive theme out of the box is
not really what I'm looking for, so I'll click Cancel.
| | 03:58 | And now that I've downloaded the theme, I can go back to
Themes, find my theme, and click Delete to remove it again.
| | 04:06 | So, as you can see, managing themes from
inside WordPress is really a very simple process.
| | 04:13 | You simply go find the theme you like, you
install it, you test it on your site, if you
| | 04:18 | don't like it just uninstall it again, and if
you do like it, customize it and publish it.
| | 04:24 | Themes are as different as
the people who build them.
| | 04:27 | There are great themes, mediocre themes, and
horrible themes, and you'll likely come across
| | 04:32 | all of them when you start experimenting.
| | 04:35 | Now you know how to manage themes for your
site and how they work, that means you're
| | 04:39 | ready to start customizing your video blog.
| | 04:44 |
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2. Using Twenty TwelveInstalling and activating Twenty Twelve| 00:00 | Normally, in the start with the theme series, I show you
three great themes found on the web that you can use.
| | 00:07 | But for this particular purpose, creating
a video blog, the current default WordPress
| | 00:12 | theme, Twenty Twelve is a
great option, so let's start there.
| | 00:17 | Out of the box, what you're
looking at is Twenty Twelve.
| | 00:21 | If you're running WordPress 3.5, you
should already have Twenty Twelve installed.
| | 00:26 | If not, it's easy to find and
install through the theme installer.
| | 00:31 | So if your site looks like mine does
right now, you have Twenty Twelve installed.
| | 00:36 | However, if you don't have it, you can go
to the WordPress toolbar, select Themes--
| | 00:41 | you can also go to Appearance and Themes--go to
Install Themes and then search for Twenty Twelve.
| | 00:50 | You'll find Twenty Twelve in the
installer and from here you can simply install it.
| | 00:54 | You'll also see here if you already
have it installed, it will say Installed.
| | 01:00 | Twenty Twelve is a new modern theme that was
designed and developed to match with the current
| | 01:04 | design trend of ultra minimalism and lots
of white space, and it's also developed to
| | 01:10 | follow new modern web standards.
| | 01:13 | By that I mean the theme works well on
your Desktop computers, and it also works well
| | 01:18 | on tablets and even mobile phones.
| | 01:20 | You can see what I'm talking about if you simply undock
your window and then change the size of the window.
| | 01:27 | You'll see this is a responsive theme, meaning,
the content changes depending on how big the
| | 01:32 | window is and you will notice most importantly
that if you go below a certain size, the main
| | 01:40 | menu changes from a standard menu to a menu
button you can click on to open your menu options.
| | 01:47 | This is great if people are visiting your
site on their cell phones and most importantly,
| | 01:52 | notice what happens to the
videos as I resize this window.
| | 01:57 | You can see that the videos are scaling up
and down to fit with the size of the window.
| | 02:02 | That means no matter what size of tool people
are using to access your site, they'll always
| | 02:07 | get a good experience when they visit your site.
| | 02:10 | Twenty Twelve is the latest and greatest for
WordPress, and it's a theme that follows the
| | 02:15 | most current web design and development standards and practices,
so by using it, you're on the cutting edge of the web.
| | 02:22 | Add to that, Twenty Twelve is a great theme
for video blogs, and we're all set to go.
| | 02:28 |
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| Basic theme customization| 00:00 | Like most WordPress themes, Twenty Twelve
comes with its own set of customization options
| | 00:06 | that allow you to personalize your site.
| | 00:09 | The options on this theme are relatively
basic, but using them the right way, they can be
| | 00:14 | quite effective at making your site look
and feel like you, if you know what I mean.
| | 00:18 | You can access the customization options
in your theme in several different ways.
| | 00:23 | One of the coolest ways to access it is by
using what's known as the Theme Customizer.
| | 00:29 | You can get to the Theme Customizer if
you're on the front page of your site, and you're
| | 00:32 | logged in and then you go to the WordPress
toolbar, go to your site name and select Customize.
| | 00:40 | This opens the Theme Customizer inside WordPress and
from here you can control different aspects of your theme.
| | 00:47 | You can set a Site Title and Tagline
like I showed you earlier in the course.
| | 00:52 | You can also select Colors, for instance, in the
Twenty Twelve theme you can set a Header Text Color.
| | 00:58 | Currently, it's #444, which is a gray,
but you can set it to any color you want.
| | 01:04 | So, you can see here I can set it to a blue.
| | 01:10 | You see the color changes here, or I can
set it to red, and again the color changes
| | 01:16 | or I'll set it back to #444.
And you can also set the Background Color.
| | 01:22 | The Background Color is what is behind here.
| | 01:24 | So you can set that to
another color if you want to.
| | 01:29 | And here I'll show you something really neat.
| | 01:31 | If you set the Background Color to white,
you'll notice how the site changes?
| | 01:37 | That's because since you already have a lot of white
space around the site, if you set it to white,
| | 01:42 | it would just look really weird, because you
have so much space at the top so the developers
| | 01:46 | have actually created a custom function just for white
backgrounds to utilize the space on the page better.
| | 01:55 | You can also set a Background Image if you want.
You can experiment with this.
| | 01:58 | I don't personally like using Background
Images, but it's fun if you have the right image.
| | 02:03 | And you can finally select if you
want to have a Static Front Page or not.
| | 02:08 | But there are two more features you
can activate to customize your site.
| | 02:12 | They're just not currently available
because you haven't activated them yet.
| | 02:16 | To get to those features, you have
to go to the back end of WordPress.
| | 02:18 | So I'm going to click Cancel and then go to
the Dashboard, and when I go down to Appearance
| | 02:25 | here, you'll see we also have Header and Menus.
| | 02:29 | But they weren't available in the Theme
Customizer because we haven't yet made a menu,
| | 02:34 | and we haven't yet uploaded a header image.
So we're going to do that now.
| | 02:37 | First, I'll make a menu. So I'll create
a new menu. I'll call it Main menu.
| | 02:44 | Click Create menu and then
I can add items to my menu.
| | 02:47 | So I'll go down here, and I'll click on View
All, and I'll add my Creative Cloud as a menu
| | 02:54 | item, and I'll also add Photoshop as a menu
item. These are both category items.
| | 03:04 | Now I'll Save my menu, and if I go back to the
front page and go back to my Theme Customizer,
| | 03:11 | you'll see we now have Navigation as an option
and from here, I can switch between the default
| | 03:16 | navigation and the Main
menu that I just created.
| | 03:20 | Now you see it adds my custom menu items here.
| | 03:28 | You can also add a custom header either by
going to the Dashboard and going to Appearance
| | 03:32 | and Header or by just going to the toolbar and selecting
Header and from here you can upload a header image.
| | 03:40 | You simply click Choose File to
find an image you want to use.
| | 03:43 | I have an image on my Desktop that I created.
| | 03:46 | I'll open that image and upload it and from
here I can now crop the image if I want to,
| | 03:53 | in any way I want, and when I'm done cropping, I can click
Crop and Publish, and that header image will now appear.
| | 04:02 | So when I go back to the front page,
you'll see we now have a header image here.
| | 04:08 | Now that you've added a header image, it's
a little bit weird that you have the title
| | 04:11 | first above here and then you have it again in the
header image, so you may want to remove the title.
| | 04:17 | You can do that from the Theme Customizer
by going to Customize and then going to Site
| | 04:22 | Title & Tagline and
turning off Display Header Text.
| | 04:27 | Now you just have the menu at the top and then you
have the big header image and then you have your content.
| | 04:32 | So if I want to finalize customizing my site,
I'm going to change the background color to
| | 04:37 | white and click Save and Publish.
| | 04:44 | Now I can close my Theme Customizer, and you
see we have a site that looks quite different
| | 04:49 | from what it did when it came out of the box.
| | 04:52 | Knowing how to customize your theme and
experiment with different settings allows you to take
| | 04:56 | ownership of your site and make it your own.
| | 05:01 |
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| Using post formats for better visibility| 00:00 | A fairly recent addition to WordPress is the
new formatting option known as Post Formats.
| | 00:07 | Post Formats are a way for you to tell the
theme what type of content each post contains
| | 00:13 | and then have the theme
handle the content accordingly.
| | 00:16 | Though there is a long list of possible Post
Formats to make available, what Post Formats
| | 00:21 | are actually available to you and what those Post
Formats do is entirely dependent on the theme developer.
| | 00:28 | In the case of the Twenty Twelve theme, there
is no Post Format for video posts, but there
| | 00:34 | is one for images, and we're going to use that Post
Format to bring the videos on our blog into focus.
| | 00:41 | Let's take a look at what
the Image Post Format does.
| | 00:44 | First, look at how my
posts are laid out right now.
| | 00:48 | You start with the title, then you have a
link to the comments and then you have the
| | 00:55 | content and the video appears at the top, because
we placed the video at the top when we made the post.
| | 01:00 | At the very bottom of my post, I also have
extra meta information that says, This entry
| | 01:05 | was posted in Creative Cloud. This is the
category and then it says, it's tagged in
| | 01:10 | adobe, cloud, and news, and we
have the date it was posted on.
| | 01:14 | Now let's see if I go in, and I change
this post to have a different Post Format.
| | 01:20 | I'll go to the back end of my site, go to
Posts, find my post, and then I'll click Quick
| | 01:27 | Edit and from here I can change to Post Format.
| | 01:31 | As you can see, I have several different
formats to choose from, I have Standard,
| | 01:36 | I have an Aside, a Link, an Image, a Quote, and a Status.
| | 01:41 | You can experiment with these different ones,
they do different things, but for now I'm
| | 01:45 | going to use the Image Post Format.
| | 01:48 | So I'll select the Image Post Format and
click Update, then I'll go back to my front page
| | 01:53 | and look what happened to our first post.
| | 01:56 | Now the content is at the top, and because
our video is at the top, the video is the
| | 02:00 | first thing to appear and then you see the
rest of the contents and under that, you have
| | 02:05 | the title except it's much smaller, and below
the title you have the date and then you have
| | 02:11 | just a link to the comments.
| | 02:14 | This is a much better view when you have a
video post, because it puts the video in focus
| | 02:19 | and then post the other content underneath.
| | 02:21 | You can also change the
Post Format in the main editor.
| | 02:25 | Let's say I want to go
and change it for this post.
| | 02:28 | I'll go into the post first and then I'll
click Edit Post to go to the main editor for
| | 02:32 | the post, and here on the right-hand side, you
see we also have the Post Formats available.
| | 02:38 | Again, I'll select Image and click Update.
| | 02:42 | When I go back and view the post, you will
see the post has been reorganized so that
| | 02:46 | we have the content on top,
and then the title underneath.
| | 02:50 | So what if you want to apply a Post Format
to all your posts? Then you just go to the
| | 02:55 | back end, go to Posts, select all the posts
using this toggle button, go to Bulk Actions
| | 03:03 | and select Edit, click Apply to activate the edit
function and then you can make changes to all your posts.
| | 03:10 | You can add or subtract Categories, add or
subtract Tags, you can change the Author,
| | 03:16 | whether or not you can Comment, what current
Status the post has, so Draft or Published,
| | 03:23 | and you can also change to Format.
| | 03:25 | So here I can go in and change all my
posts to the Image Format and click Update.
| | 03:32 | And now when I go back to my front page,
you'll see as we scroll down, that now the video
| | 03:39 | is in focus for every single post.
| | 03:43 | Using Post Formats can be rewarding,
or it can be pretty much pointless.
| | 03:47 | It all depends on how the theme developer
put the theme together and what kind of content
| | 03:51 | you have and how you want
to display that content.
| | 03:55 | Later in the course, you'll see a different way of
using Post Formats for some more interesting results.
| | 04:01 | But I'm getting ahead of myself here.
| | 04:02 | Suffice it to say using the Image Post
Formats in the Twenty Twelve theme is optional and
| | 04:08 | can make a big difference in how your video blog
appears to your visitors. It's up to you.
| | 04:13 |
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| Things to keep in mind when using Twenty Twelve| 00:00 | Like I said off the top, Twenty Twelve is
the current default theme for WordPress.
| | 00:05 | For this reason, it's a solid theme with very few
issues, even so there are some things to keep in mind.
| | 00:12 | The first point is maybe
the most obvious one too.
| | 00:15 | Because Twenty Twelve is the new current
default theme for WordPress, a lot of websites are
| | 00:22 | going to be using Twenty Twelve as their theme, and a lot
of websites would be using Twenty Twelve without any customization.
| | 00:29 | So if you don't customize the site by adding
a header image and maybe changing the colors
| | 00:34 | around, and adding a menu, your site will
end up looking like everyone else's site.
| | 00:40 | The good thing is if you want to know how
to customize Twenty Twelve even more, you
| | 00:44 | can go check out my WordPress Building
Child Themes course right here in the lynda.com
| | 00:49 | online training library where I show you how to
build a more Advanced Child Theme based on Twenty Twelve.
| | 00:57 | Another thing to keep in mind is
to remember to use the More Tag.
| | 01:00 | And I'll show you what I mean by that.
| | 01:02 | I've added some extra texts to one of my
posts here, so the first post has a lot of text.
| | 01:08 | The problem is this is supposed to be a video
blog, right? So it's supposed to have videos
| | 01:12 | in focus, but if you write long pieces of
texts underneath the videos, and I'm not saying
| | 01:18 | you shouldn't do that, I actually encourage
you to write a lot of text in your video post
| | 01:22 | to give people information
and share your thoughts.
| | 01:26 | But if you do that, you have to use the
More Tag to avoid what you are seeing here.
| | 01:29 | When I'm scrolling, I'm seeing a lot
of text before I get to the next video.
| | 01:34 | To add the More Tag, I'm going to go into
my posts, so I scroll down to the button here
| | 01:38 | and find the link to my post, then I'll go
to Edit Post, and I'll go and place the More
| | 01:43 | Tag where I want the post to split.
| | 01:47 | So I'll paste the More Tag directly after the first
paragraph here, and the More Tag is this icon here.
| | 01:52 | It looks like a page and then a line and a page.
| | 01:55 | Now you see there's a little divider
entered into my post here, and when I Update this
| | 02:02 | post and go back to the front page of my site,
you'll see that instead of having all that
| | 02:08 | text, we just have the first paragraph and
then a Continue reading link. This is the More Tag.
| | 02:14 | So what it does is it puts a Continue reading
link into your index pages and then when you
| | 02:19 | click on the Continue reading link, you
jump directly to where the text was split.
| | 02:25 | So if you have a lot of text, always use
the More Tag to simplify your index pages.
| | 02:33 | Knowing the caveats of using Twenty Twelve
and steering clear of them, you can build
| | 02:37 | a robust and visually pleasing
video blog with very little effort.
| | 02:42 |
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|
|
3. Using OrigamiInstalling and activating Origami| 00:00 | Origami is a freemium theme available from
SiteOrigin that is well-suited as a video blog theme.
| | 00:07 | It's quite different from Twenty Twelve and most other
themes, in particular because it's a one-column theme.
| | 00:13 | In other words, it doesn't have a sidebar.
| | 00:16 | The focus of this theme is
on content and content only.
| | 00:20 | For content creators, this is a great thing
and a means you get nice big videos to display.
| | 00:27 | One-column design is also a
bleeding-edge trend among the web literary.
| | 00:30 | Origami is available in the
WordPress theme directory.
| | 00:35 | So to install it, you just go to your sites,
go to the WordPress toolbar, and select Themes,
| | 00:41 | and then you go to Install Themes,
and search for Origami.
| | 00:50 | It looks like this, it has
this nice crane on the front page.
| | 00:53 | And from here, I can click Install
Now, then I will Activate the theme.
| | 01:00 | I get a warning up here from Greg--the guy
that made the theme--that I'm going to Dismiss.
| | 01:06 | And when I go back to the front page,
you'll see that my blog has changed completely.
| | 01:12 | I now have the title up here and
underneath I have gigantic videos.
| | 01:23 | Like I said, Origami is a different
type of theme from what you usually see.
| | 01:28 | But because of how it works, and in particular its focus on
content over craft, it's an excellent option for video blogs.
| | 01:37 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exploring Origami theme settings| 00:00 | As I mentioned in the previous
movie, Origami is a freemium theme.
| | 00:05 | By freemium, I mean it's a free theme that you can upgrade
for a few dollars to a premium theme with more functionality.
| | 00:12 | For this reason, you'll see that Origami
has some free customization options, and that
| | 00:17 | some of the customization
options are activated once you upgrade.
| | 00:22 | But before we look at the custom options, let's look at what
options are available from the WordPress customization options.
| | 00:29 | To get to the WordPress customizer, we go
to the toolbar and select Customize and from
| | 00:35 | here you can customize some
basic features in the theme.
| | 00:39 | You can change the Site Title & Tagline,
you can change the Color of the Background but
| | 00:46 | if you want to do that, I'll select the Color
here, so I'll set the Background Color to red.
| | 00:51 | You notice that the background isn't actually turning
red that's because the background currently has a tiled image.
| | 00:58 | So to get my custom Background Color to work,
I have to go into Background Image, click
| | 01:03 | on the image, and click Remove Image and
then you can see the custom Background Color.
| | 01:09 | You can also set Navigation if
you've created a custom menu.
| | 01:12 | If you don't have a custom menu built in
WordPress admin, you won't have this option.
| | 01:17 | But I built a custom menu, so
therefore, I can pick a menu.
| | 01:20 | By default, you see a menu that contains the
Home button, plus a list of all your pages,
| | 01:26 | but since I don't have any pages,
I don't have any menu items.
| | 01:29 | Instead, I created a menu that
displays links to the different categories.
| | 01:34 | So here I have the Home link,
plus the two categories.
| | 01:37 | Finally, you can set whether or not the front
page should display the blog or static page.
| | 01:44 | Once you made changes, you can either Save &
Publish those changes, or you can click Cancel
| | 01:49 | if you don't like what you're seeing.
| | 01:53 | But there's one more option that wasn't available in
the theme customizer, and that was the header image.
| | 01:59 | Now you may remember we added a header image
in Twenty Twelve, so why can't we change to
| | 02:05 | that header image in Origami? The reason is that
WordPress 3.5 now remembers all your theme settings.
| | 02:13 | So although we added a header image to Twenty
Twelve, we have yet to add a header image to Origami.
| | 02:20 | I need to add a header image to
it to be able to customize it.
| | 02:24 | So I'll go to the WordPress toolbar, select
Header--or you can go to the back end and select
| | 02:29 | Appearance and Header--and since I've already
uploaded the image. I'm going to click Choose
| | 02:35 | Image, so I can pick from my Media Library
and then I'll select the image and click Set
| | 02:41 | as header, and here I get the image cropper.
Now this is really important.
| | 02:47 | For whatever reason, Origami doesn't auto
crop this image, and if you click Crop and
| | 02:52 | Publish while the image is grayed out
like this, you'll get a bunch of errors.
| | 02:56 | So take your mouse and click somewhere inside
the image and just drag to open the cropper,
| | 03:03 | and select whatever part of the image you
want to use and then click Crop and Publish.
| | 03:10 | Now the header image is applied, and if I go back to
the front page, you'll see we now have a header image.
| | 03:16 | And you'll notice that in Origami, the title
was replaced by the header image, so we don't
| | 03:21 | have to turn the title off like
we had to do in Twenty Twelve.
| | 03:25 | Now, let's take a quick look at the customization
features that are built into Origami specifically.
| | 03:31 | I'll go back to admin, go to
Appearance, and select Theme Settings.
| | 03:38 | From here, I can make some customizations, and
if I upgrade I can also make additional ones.
| | 03:45 | I can change my Link Color to a different
color, and if I have the Premium version,
| | 03:49 | I could also change Page Border Colors and Footer Copyright Color
and Footer Copyright Link Color. I can change the Site Text.
| | 03:57 | This is the Copyright message and the message
on the Error Page or No Search Results pages.
| | 04:04 | Under Display, I can decide whether I want to
display things like the Post Author or Comment Count.
| | 04:10 | And I can also enable or disable the
Header Search if you look on the front page.
| | 04:17 | You'll see we have a search box here, so you
can disable it or enable it, and you can put
| | 04:23 | in a Footer Attribution Link
if you have the Premium version.
| | 04:27 | Under Comments, you can activate Ajax
Comments but this is only available in the Premium
| | 04:32 | version and the same goes
for the Responsive Layout.
| | 04:36 | Finally, you have an option for adding
Social links, and again, this is only available in
| | 04:41 | the Premium version, or you can add a plug-in
like Share this, and that will do the same thing.
| | 04:47 | So I'm sure you're wondering how
do I upgrade to the Premium version.
| | 04:50 | Well, all you have to do is either click on
the link here or go to Premium Upgrade, which
| | 04:55 | is available under Appearance, and from here you can
download the Premium version for the cost of currently $5.00.
| | 05:06 | Even with a limited customization options
in the free version of the Origami theme,
| | 05:11 | you have a lot of room to make the
theme suit your individual style.
| | 05:15 | And if you want more customization
options, an upgrade is only a few dollars away.
| | 05:20 |
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| Things to keep in mind when using Origami| 00:00 | Origami is a lightweight and minimalist theme.
| | 00:04 | That means some of the features you often
expect to see in a WordPress site are not
| | 00:08 | there, features such as a sidebar with further
navigation, social media icons to the site owner, and so on.
| | 00:15 | That doesn't mean you can't
have these types of links, though.
| | 00:19 | It just means you have to
think a bit out of the box.
| | 00:22 | Using the main menu, you can create great
and useful navigation as well as social links.
| | 00:27 | Let me show you what I mean.
| | 00:29 | Let's say I want to add links to for
instance my different categories in the menu.
| | 00:34 | You saw that I've already made a menu that has those
links earlier, but let me show you how I made them.
| | 00:40 | I'll go to my WordPress
toolbar and go down to Menus.
| | 00:44 | You can also go to admin
and then Appearance and Menus.
| | 00:47 | And here I've created a Main menu and then added a
Home button to it and then the links to my two categories.
| | 00:55 | If you want to know how I made the Home button,
I simply made a custom link and pointed it
| | 01:00 | to the Home location of my site with a
navigation Home and the category buttons were made by
| | 01:06 | going down to Categories here and simply
selecting the categories I want to display.
| | 01:12 | Now I also want to make some social media
links, so I'm going to make a link that says
| | 01:17 | Social and then I'm going to make links underneath it
in the sub-menu that point to different social media locations.
| | 01:24 | So first, I'll make the button that says Social.
| | 01:27 | Under Custom Links, I'll set the URL to
pound, this results in a link to the current
| | 01:32 | page you're on, and that's because I just
want this button to be there so I can hover
| | 01:37 | over it and then see the other options.
| | 01:39 | The Label, I'm going to set to Social and
click Add to menu, and then I'm going to go
| | 01:45 | and open it and add a Title Attribute that
describes what this is Social links to Mor10.
| | 01:54 | Then I want to add my actual social links.
| | 01:56 | So first I'm going to add a link to
twitter.com/mort10, because that's me.
| | 02:02 | I'll click Add to menu and then I'll
shift it in so it becomes a submenu of Social.
| | 02:09 | I'll go in here and add in the Title
Attribute, Follow @Mor10 on Twitter,
| | 02:17 | and then I'll also add a Facebook link.
So I'll go facebook.com/pinkandyellowmedia and then say Facebook,
| | 02:30 | click Add to menu again, shift it in,
add a Title Attribute, and click Save menu.
| | 02:42 | Now, currently the menu is
not assigned to the front page.
| | 02:46 | So I can do that here under Theme Locations
by selecting Main menu and clicking Save, or
| | 02:52 | I could do it in the Theme Customizer.
| | 02:55 | So now, my Main menu shows a Home link, a
link to each of the categories, and when I
| | 03:00 | hover over Social, you get the
link to Twitter and to Facebook.
| | 03:05 | The only problem that's left here is if I
click on Twitter right now, it jumps my window
| | 03:10 | directly to Twitter, so I got away from my site.
| | 03:14 | I can fix that by going back into Menus,
going to Screen Options, selecting Link Target,
| | 03:24 | closing Screen Options again, and then
going to the Twitter one and check Open link in
| | 03:29 | a new window, and doing the same for Facebook.
| | 03:34 | Now when I save the menu, go back to the front
page, hover over Social again and select Twitter,
| | 03:41 | you see it now opens a
separate tab linking to me on Twitter.
| | 03:46 | Being a one-column theme, Origami forces you
to approach your content a bit differently.
| | 03:52 | But with the right configuration and a
willingness to break with established norms, you can use
| | 03:57 | this theme to make a truly
unique video blog with WordPress.
| | 04:02 |
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|
|
4. Using SundanceInstalling and activating Sundance| 00:00 | The final theme we're going to look
at in this course is called Sundance.
| | 00:05 | As the name suggests, this theme is made
for video, and as a bonus the theme was built
| | 00:10 | by Automatic, the company that runs WordPress.com
for video bloggers using WordPress.com.
| | 00:17 | So it's a rock solid theme
that's very easy to work with.
| | 00:21 | Because Sundance is a WordPress.com theme,
it even has its own web page that you can
| | 00:26 | see right here where you can look at screen grabs
of Sundance, and you can also click to see a live demo.
| | 00:34 | Sundance is available in the WordPress
theme directory, so to install it, all you have
| | 00:39 | to do is go to WordPress, go to the Dashboard, go to Appearance
& Themes, and then click Install themes and search for Sundance.
| | 00:52 | Once you find it, you can click Install Now, and
once it's installed, I'm simply going to Activate it.
| | 00:59 | Now I can jump to the front page of my site
and here you see Sundance with no configuration.
| | 01:06 | On the face of it, Sundance looks like any
other WordPress theme, but once you know how
| | 01:11 | to use it, you'll see it's designed to
showcase your videos and does so in a very nice way.
| | 01:16 |
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| Sundance theme customization| 00:00 | As most standard WordPress themes and especially
because Sundance is a theme designed by
| | 00:06 | Automatic for WordPress.com, the theme has the
basic theme customization options available.
| | 00:12 | In addition, it has a few other options
that further enable you to customize your site.
| | 00:17 | So let's look at the standard
customization options first.
| | 00:20 | You'll find them under the Theme Customizer.
| | 00:23 | You can go to them from
the Toolbar and Customize.
| | 00:28 | From here, you can change the Site Title &
Tagline either by changing it or by turning Display
| | 00:32 | Header Text on and off, and you can change
other elements like the Header Text Color
| | 00:45 | and the Background Color.
| | 00:48 | But just like with the Origami theme, this
theme has a background image that covers the
| | 00:53 | background color ,and to add to that, if you
turn the Background Image off for whatever reason,
| | 01:00 | it doesn't actually turn off in the theme previewer.
| | 01:04 | So if you want to experiment with a different
background color, you have to turn the
| | 01:08 | Background Image off, set a different color, and then
click Save & Publish and close the Theme Customizer
| | 01:14 | to see what it looks like.
| | 01:16 | And as you can see, depending on what
kind of color you use as a background, you can
| | 01:20 | end up with some pretty strange results, so
I recommend trying to stick with a gray-toned
| | 01:28 | background color if you can.
Let's say I'll pick something gray here.
| | 01:35 | You already saw the Background Image function
so the last two options are your Navigation,
| | 01:40 | so here I can assign my custom menu, and you
see it works the same way that the other one did,
| | 01:47 | and I can set a Static Front Page if I want.
| | 01:51 | I want to set the theme back to its
standard settings except for the Navigation.
| | 01:56 | To do that, I need to bring back that
background image, so I'll go back to Background Image.
| | 02:02 | I'll go to Default and then select default image,
and here you'll see that image came back in.
| | 02:09 | Now I can Save & Publish.
| | 02:12 | I'll close the Theme Customizer and then we can
take a look at the added customization options.
| | 02:18 | Like with Twenty Twelve and Origami, if we
want to use a header image, we have to actively
| | 02:24 | add it to the theme first,
so I'll do that first.
| | 02:27 | I'll go to the WordPress Toolbar, Select Header,
I'll click Choose Image to choose an existing image,
| | 02:36 | I'll pick the first image I uploaded,
click Set as header,
| | 02:41 | let the cropper auto crop it and
just move the cropping around a bit,
| | 02:46 | click Crop & Publish, and open the site in a
separate window so I can see what it looks like.
| | 02:53 | It looks okay, so now I'm going to go into
the customizer and turn Site Title & Tagline
| | 03:00 | off so that we're not doubling the
information and then I click Save & Publish again.
| | 03:08 | Now that I've added the header image,
you'll notice that the header image spans across
| | 03:12 | an area of the site that is
not used on the index page.
| | 03:17 | But if you go to a single post, you'll see why.
| | 03:20 | This area is being used to display
the avatar for the author of the post.
| | 03:25 | In this case it's me, so you see my face.
| | 03:29 | If you had comments, you'd also see the
avatar for the commenter in the same area.
| | 03:35 | But Sundance has a couple of
extra customization features built in.
| | 03:39 | If you go to the back end, and you go to Appearance,
you'll see we also have an option here called Theme Options.
| | 03:45 | When you go into Theme Options, you see we
can add some extra links into our sidebar.
| | 03:51 | You can add an RSS Link by checking it.
| | 03:54 | You can also add a Twitter link, a
Facebook link, a Google+ link, and a Flickr link.
| | 04:00 | You have to put in your URLs for each of these,
I'll say http://twitter.com/mort10, and when
| | 04:09 | I save these changes, then go back to my site, you'll
see those icons appear here at the top of my sidebar.
| | 04:17 | You can choose whether or not you want to
activate these, and as you can see, depending
| | 04:21 | on which ones you put information
into, they'll appear or disappear.
| | 04:26 | So this is entirely optional.
| | 04:29 | Sundance is built to be easy to use, and
that is reflected in its customization options,
| | 04:34 | but its true power lies in how it
handles videos on the front page.
| | 04:38 | So that's what we'll look at next.
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| Displaying videos in the front page video slider| 00:00 | The true power of Sundance as a video blog
theme lies in a hidden feature on the front page.
| | 00:06 | If you set up your post correctly, you'll
get a cool video slider on the top of the
| | 00:11 | front page that allows the visitor to
cycle through the videos you choose to display.
| | 00:16 | Let's see how that works.
| | 00:18 | Right now on the front page, there is no video slider,
but we can activate it by just changing some settings.
| | 00:26 | So I'll go to my Dashboard and to my post.
| | 00:29 | And now I want this first post
here to appear in the video slider.
| | 00:34 | To do that, I need to go into the post
and then I need to change some settings.
| | 00:39 | First, I want to change the Post Format to Video.
Then I need to make these posts sticky.
| | 00:45 | I do that by going to Visibility, click Edit,
and then select Stick this post to the front page.
| | 00:53 | Now when I Update the post, you'll see that when
reload my front page, the post appears here at the top.
| | 01:01 | We have the video and then some of the
texts and the More Tag, and we'll also have the
| | 01:05 | title of the video with a link directly to
that post and some text on the side here.
| | 01:12 | Now that we see what it looks like,
we can start experimenting with it.
| | 01:15 | For example, this text here on the right-hand side
under the title is actually the excerpt of the post.
| | 01:24 | So if I go back to the post and go to Screen
Options and select Excerpt, I can scroll down
| | 01:30 | and change the excerpt for the post.
| | 01:35 | You'll notice that the excerpt text is
different from the main text, and it can be.
| | 01:41 | When I update the post and reload my page,
you'll see that now the video displays with
| | 01:48 | the content underneath and then the
excerpt displays here on the side.
| | 01:52 | Now this excerpt will only display here on the side
and also when you share the post out on the Internet.
| | 01:59 | So it's a way of controlling
the message that's being sent out.
| | 02:02 | The final thing you need to notice is that,
yes, the text appears underneath the video,
| | 02:08 | that's because the way this slider works is it just
grabs the content of the post and displays it here.
| | 02:15 | So if I were to go in to the post, go to the
text section and remove the More Tag and Update it
| | 02:23 | and then reload the page, you'll see
that the video slider will appear with all the
| | 02:29 | text underneath, and that does not look good.
| | 02:32 | So when we're using Sundance,
you have to move your More Tag.
| | 02:37 | If you have text in your post, you need to
move the More Tag to directly under the link
| | 02:42 | to your video, update the post, and now when
you reload it, you get the video with a nice
| | 02:52 | more link underneath it, and then you
get the title for the post and the excerpt.
| | 02:58 | You'll also notice that the video because it's in the
slider no longer appears here in the list underneath.
| | 03:04 | And if I add more videos to it, so I'll go
back to All Posts, and this time I'll use
| | 03:10 | the Quick Edit to do it
I'll add the next video here,
| | 03:14 | I can go and Make the post sticky, and I'll
change the Post Format to Video and click Update.
| | 03:20 | I can reload the front page, and now we
have two videos, meaning you can see that there
| | 03:27 | are two videos down here.
| | 03:28 | You can navigate between them, and you can also
use these arrows to navigate between the two videos.
| | 03:37 | This slider takes as many as ten videos and
they're posted based on date, meaning
| | 03:42 | as you add more videos, the older
ones will fall out on the back end.
| | 03:47 | If you don't want to display a video any more,
all you have to do is uncheck the sticky option.
| | 03:52 | So let's say I don't want the first video
to appear, I can go to Quick Edit, uncheck
| | 03:57 | the Make this post sticky option and update the post,
and then I'll add a couple of other videos instead.
| | 04:02 | So I'll check these four videos, go to
Edit under Bulk Actions, click Apply, and then
| | 04:11 | set the format to Video and set Sticky to
Sticky, click Update, reload the front page,
| | 04:22 | and now we have five videos.
| | 04:24 | We can navigate between them, and when you
scroll down you see that that post An Introduction
| | 04:34 | to Adobe Creative Cloud appears at
the top, because it's no longer sticky.
| | 04:40 | Now you see why Sundance is called Sundance.
| | 04:44 | It's a theme build for video blogs, and it puts the
videos front and center right where they should be.
| | 04:51 |
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| Things to keep in mind when using Sundance| 00:00 | Though Sundance is a great video blogging theme,
there are couple of things you need to keep in mind.
| | 00:06 | First of all, like I showed you in the earlier video,
this front page slider shows all the contents in the post.
| | 00:14 | That means if you have a post that has a video and a
bunch of text, it will start looking really strange.
| | 00:19 | So if you want to add videos and text, you need
to make sure you use the More Tag in all your post.
| | 00:26 | So again just to show you, I have to go to
the individual post, Edit that post,
| | 00:33 | and place the More Tag directly after the YouTube video.
| | 00:37 | I can do this either in the Text area by clicking
More, or I can go to Visual, place my cursor,
| | 00:43 | and click the Insert More Tag button.
| | 00:46 | When I update the post and go back to the
front page, you'll see instead of all that
| | 00:53 | text on the bottom, we just
get a nice little More Tag.
| | 00:56 | Also remember to add your excerpts so that you
get extra text to the side here if you want to.
| | 01:02 | This is completely optional, but it makes a difference
if you want to add more information about your posts.
| | 01:08 | Sundance knows which post to put in this
video's letter based on what posts are set to sticky,
| | 01:15 | and also which post have the video post format.
| | 01:18 | So what happens if you take the video post
format away? Let's go down here and take
| | 01:23 | a look at one of the posts, let's say this one,
How to rotate a layer in Photoshop?
| | 01:28 | I can go into this post, go edit, and then I'll leave the
Post Format as Standard, but I'll still set it to Sticky.
| | 01:38 | When I go back to my front page now, you'll
see that we have the slider and then the first
| | 01:46 | post we have is that How to rotate a
layer in Photoshop, and it says Featured.
| | 01:51 | That's because now this is just a featured post.
| | 01:54 | But since it's not a featured video post, it's
placed at the top of the index but not in the slider.
| | 02:01 | So this is a way of featuring
content without featuring it in the slider.
| | 02:06 | The last caveat I have with this theme is
that when I was experimenting with it, I found
| | 02:11 | that in some cases the video
slider became really wonky.
| | 02:16 | The most important thing--and this may
seem strange, but it actually makes sense when
| | 02:20 | you think about how this works--is you
can play all the videos at the same time.
| | 02:25 | So I can go in play all the
videos at the same time.
| | 02:32 | (video playing)
| | 02:44 | And now you see...
| | 02:46 | (video playing)
| | 03:00 | ...that sounds pretty crazy, and that
is normal behavior for the slider.
| | 03:05 | It's simply because the slider when it's
populated pulls all the videos in, and because the videos
| | 03:11 | are available, you can play them all at the
same time for some very interesting results.
| | 03:17 | So you have to be aware that this
might happen when people access your site.
| | 03:21 | Of course, they'll probably figure out what they
did and turn the videos off, but it can happen.
| | 03:27 | Sundance, and in particular the video slider, is
designed with videos and only videos in mind.
| | 03:33 | This means if you want to add text and other
content to your posts, and I think you should,
| | 03:38 | then you need to use the More Tag to ensure
the slider doesn't end up looking really weird.
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ConclusionGetting the word out through social media sharing| 00:00 | Once people have launched a site, the first question
they generally ask is how do I get listed on Google?
| | 00:05 | And the second one is how do I
get people to visit my site?
| | 00:11 | The answer to both of these questions is social
media and a solid social sharing strategy.
| | 00:17 | The web is full of millions upon millions
of blogs, so simply launching a blog does
| | 00:23 | not mean people are going to
find it or read it or share it.
| | 00:27 | The best way you can achieve reading and sharing
on your blog is actually by sharing it yourself.
| | 00:33 | So after creating a blog,
start sharing your content.
| | 00:38 | When you write a post or find a video you
like, go to that video or post, copy out your
| | 00:45 | URL and paste it in to social sharing sites
like Facebook and Twitter and get your friends
| | 00:52 | to watch it and share it.
| | 00:54 | Also, if people interact with you in the
comments, make sure to always respond to the comments.
| | 01:00 | Start a conversation, that way you ensure
that people feel like you're a real person
| | 01:05 | that they can interact with.
| | 01:07 | You can also engage people by asking them
questions on Twitter, on Facebook, or even in your site.
| | 01:14 | Ask them about what they want to see next,
or ask them about other experiences they've
| | 01:19 | had or their favorite videos and then share
those with the viewers so that they will then
| | 01:25 | feel that they're interacting with your site.
| | 01:28 | The final thing I want to
suggest is that you add a contact page.
| | 01:32 | This is always a good idea because once people see your
contact page, they have an easy way of contacting you.
| | 01:38 | Although immediate reaction to a contact page
is to add your email address, but that's actually
| | 01:43 | a really bad idea, because there are not
just people on the Internet, there is also these
| | 01:48 | computers that troll the Internet looking
for email addresses, and once they find your
| | 01:53 | email address, they start
sending you garbage email.
| | 01:57 | Putting in a form instead is a much better
solution, because then people can fill out
| | 02:01 | the form, and you get the email
without all the spam in the process.
| | 02:05 | I'll show you how to add a very simple form.
I'll go to the back end of my site.
| | 02:11 | I need to add a plug-in, so I'll go Plugins and click
Add New and here I'll Search for grunion, click Search.
| | 02:21 | Here you have the Grunion Contact Form.
I'll click Install Now,
| | 02:28 | activate the plug-in, and now I can go to
Pages and create a New Page, call it Contact,
| | 02:37 | I'll say Contact me, and
then I'll put in the form.
| | 02:42 | The form appears here because once we added the
Grunion Contact Form plug-in, we got this new button.
| | 02:48 | So I'll click on the new button, and
this allows me to customize a form.
| | 02:52 | The standard form is actually fine, and the
email notification goes to the default email
| | 02:58 | address you set up when you set up your site.
| | 03:01 | So I'll simply click Add this form to my posts, Publish
the post, and then I need to add the contact page to my menu.
| | 03:08 | So I'll go to Appearance > Menus,
go down to Pages and find Contact,
| | 03:15 | add the contact page to my menu, save the menu,
| | 03:19 | go to the front page, and now when I click on the Contact
button, I'm taken to a contact page that has a form.
| | 03:28 | When people fill out the form and click
Submit, you get an email with that form entry.
| | 03:33 | And if you don't get the email, you'll
see the form appear here under Feedbacks.
| | 03:39 | Social media is all about engagements and even ignoring
social media, engagement is always good business.
| | 03:47 | So now that you have the site up and running,
focus on a solid sharing and communication
| | 03:51 | strategy, reach out to your fans,
and most importantly, have fun.
| | 03:56 |
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