IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | Hi! My name is Morten Rand-Hendriksen
and welcome to WordPress.com
| | 00:08 | Essential Training.
| | 00:10 | In this course we'll look at how to
set up a free website or blog using the
| | 00:14 | online service provided by WordPress.com.
| | 00:17 | We will then dive headfirst into the
many settings and options available to you.
| | 00:21 | I'll show you how to create posts and
pages with your own content, we'll add
| | 00:27 | and configure images and galleries and
embed YouTube videos into our posts, and
| | 00:33 | we'll look at the advanced settings
of WordPress.com, so you can use the
| | 00:37 | application to its fullest.
| | 00:39 | If you want to create a website or
blog, but you don't want the hassle of
| | 00:43 | having to manage a hosting
application and setting it all up yourself,
| | 00:47 | WordPress.com is the perfect option.
| | 00:49 | Let's get cracking with
WordPress.com Essential Training.
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1. Getting to Know WordPressUsing your own asset files | 00:00 | Before we get started, just a quick note
on the content I'll be using and you'll
| | 00:05 | be using while following this course.
| | 00:07 | I've designed this course to teach you
how to use WordPress to publish your own
| | 00:12 | content to the Web in the most effective way.
| | 00:14 | Therefore, rather than give you a bunch
of dummy text and dummy images to work
| | 00:18 | with, I want you to use your own
text, images and other materials.
| | 00:23 | That way when you finish the course
you'll have a site with real content you've
| | 00:27 | created and published.
| | 00:28 | So, whenever you see me go to my
Assets folder or use text or images or other
| | 00:34 | material, use your own material.
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| What is WordPress?| 00:00 | When I start something new, like trying
to learn new skill--let's say I want to
| | 00:04 | pick up a new dance, or I want to learn
a new photography technique, or I want
| | 00:08 | to start using a new application--I find that
it's always best to start with the clean slate.
| | 00:13 | Throw away all my
preconceptions and start from the ground up.
| | 00:16 | That way I can go in and figure out what
this is all about, how it works and how
| | 00:21 | it can work for me, and figure out all
the small little details that will help me
| | 00:26 | use whatever it is I want
to do to its full capacity.
| | 00:30 | A good place to start therefore is to
ask a simple question, and in our case that
| | 00:35 | question is, what is WordPress?
| | 00:37 | It's actually a very complicated
question to answer, but I can start by
| | 00:41 | answering it in a very simple way.
| | 00:43 | WordPress is a publishing platform
that makes it easy for you to create a
| | 00:46 | website where you can publish
your content to the Internet.
| | 00:50 | And WordPress comes in two varieties.
| | 00:52 | You have WordPress.com, which is the cloud-hosted
--which means that it lives on the Internet--
| | 00:56 | service, where you can set up your own
website for free and you can create it
| | 01:01 | within the WordPress ecosystem.
| | 01:03 | You also have a self-hosted
variety of WordPress.
| | 01:06 | This is the same application as
what you see on WordPress.com, but it's
| | 01:10 | hosted on your own Web server, that
way you have complete control over it.
| | 01:14 | Whether you want to use WordPress.com
or if you want to use WordPress as a
| | 01:18 | self-hosted application, depends both on
your skill set and also on what you want to do.
| | 01:24 | If you are watching this course, which
is about WordPress.com, but what
| | 01:28 | you're accually interested in is
how to do WordPress self-hosting,
| | 01:32 | you should go check out my other course, WordPress
Essential Training in the Lynda.com Online Training Library.
| | 01:39 | WordPress was created by this guy,
Matt Mullenweg, you see him down here, and
| | 01:44 | this is his blog, which is a WordPress blog.
| | 01:46 | Matt wanted a simple way of publishing
content on the Internet, so he started
| | 01:50 | working with some other people and
created WordPress, and now it's become one of
| | 01:54 | the most important and most popular
Web publishing applications out there.
| | 01:58 | If you want to get a good idea what
WordPress is, you should actually just go
| | 02:01 | the Matt's website, because here you
see exactly what WordPress was originally
| | 02:06 | meant to be, a simple bloging tool
where he can just muse about whatever he
| | 02:09 | wants and posts content all the time.
| | 02:12 | It's actually kind of funny to read
what Matt has to say because he travels the
| | 02:15 | world, he meets a lot of interesting
people, and he has thoughts on pretty much
| | 02:18 | everything and he puts it all
out there so you can read it.
| | 02:21 | But WordPress is so much more
than just a blogging platform.
| | 02:25 | If you go to the Notable WordPress
Users page on WordPress.com, you get an idea
| | 02:30 | of just how important WordPress is.
| | 02:32 | You can see that it's used by some
really heavy hitters, from famous blogs to
| | 02:36 | news organizations like CNN, to music
stars, fashion stars, technology firms,
| | 02:43 | politics and even Fortune 500 Companies.
| | 02:45 | Pretty much everyone uses WordPress
these days for all sorts of things and
| | 02:50 | that's kind of the point.
| | 02:51 | WordPress isn't a one-size-fits-all
type of thing.
| | 02:54 | WordPress can be whatever you want it to be.
| | 02:57 | You just have to grab it, put your
own ideas into it and then twist it into
| | 03:01 | whatever you want it to be.
| | 03:02 | If you go around the Internet and you
look at what WordPress being used for, you
| | 03:06 | have everything from magazines that use
it to publish simple content, to people
| | 03:11 | who use WordPress to track their own
exercises, and you have people like me, who
| | 03:16 | use WordPress to build advanced
websites for companies like Microsoft or
| | 03:21 | Frugalbits or they run events through WordPress.
| | 03:24 | This is an event that I created in
Vancouver called the 12X12 Vancouver Photo
| | 03:27 | Marathon, the Website is
also run through WordPress.
| | 03:30 | And these examples show
something else that's important.
| | 03:33 | WordPress isn't just one look or one thing.
People use WordPress for all sorts
| | 03:38 | of things and WordPress websites
can look like pretty much anything.
| | 03:42 | In fact, often and so hard to recognize
a WordPress website from something else,
| | 03:48 | they you have to actually go into the
backend to find out what application is
| | 03:51 | running behind it, because
WordPress doesn't really have a look to it.
| | 03:55 | There's no such thing as
that's what WordPress looks like.
| | 03:58 | And that's because WordPress is Open
Source, there are millions of developers
| | 04:02 | out there that are constantly adding to
WordPress to add new functionality, add
| | 04:07 | new looks, and add new behaviors.
| | 04:09 | So WordPress is in constant motion,
constantly improving and constant shaping
| | 04:13 | itself to fit with the people who use it.
| | 04:17 | So let's get back to that key
question, what is WordPress?
| | 04:20 | If you ask me, my answer is WordPress is
whatever you want it to be, and I think
| | 04:25 | that's a good place to start.
| | 04:27 | WordPress is a simple and easy-to-use
publishing platform for the Web and you
| | 04:31 | can use it to create anything from an
advanced website to a basic blog and
| | 04:35 | anything in between.
| | 04:37 | And you can even make sites that can
switch between being blogs and non-blogs at
| | 04:41 | the touch of a button.
| | 04:42 | The possibilities, when using
WordPress, are pretty much endless.
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| Understanding the difference between cloud hosting and self-hosting| 00:00 | WordPress comes in two varieties, free
cloud-hosting, via WordPress.com, and a
| | 00:06 | self-hosted option that you
can download from WordPress.org.
| | 00:09 | Both run the same program and
have the same basic features.
| | 00:13 | But each has their advantages and disadvantages.
| | 00:16 | Choosing what option is right for you,
is a matter of mapping out the needs of
| | 00:20 | your sites and where you
want to take in the future.
| | 00:23 | The good thing is, whichever option you
go for now, does not have to be final.
| | 00:27 | You can build a site on WordPress.com
and then move it to self-hosted solution
| | 00:32 | down the road if need be.
| | 00:33 | Or, you can build a site on a self-
hosted solution now, and move it to
| | 00:37 | WordPress.com later.
| | 00:39 | WordPress is incredibly flexible in all
aspects, even when it comes to how it's hosted.
| | 00:44 | So let's take a look at the
features of WordPress.com and WordPress
| | 00:47 | self-hosting side by side.
| | 00:49 | WordPress.com is managed by a company
called Automatic, which is owned by the
| | 00:54 | guys that created WordPress to begin with.
| | 00:56 | That means anything that happens on
WordPress.com is managed by them, and any
| | 01:00 | updates come from Automatic.
| | 01:03 | WordPress.com lives in the cloud.
| | 01:05 | Now the cloud is this
trend word that everyone uses.
| | 01:08 | Basically the cloud means that it
just lives on the Internet usually on a
| | 01:12 | distributed network of multiple
servers. And for you as a user that means
| | 01:17 | that it's pretty fast, pretty
secure and if a server goes down for some
| | 01:22 | reason, it doesn't mean that your
website is just going to disappear off the
| | 01:25 | Internet in the process.
| | 01:26 | Because WordPress.com is managed by
Automatic, you have automatic maintenance.
| | 01:31 | You don't have to worry about
anything that happens there.
| | 01:33 | All you have to worry about is your own content.
| | 01:36 | However, because WordPress is
owned by Automatic, there are
| | 01:39 | content restrictions.
| | 01:41 | Automatic won't let you publish
anything you want, and of course, most of the
| | 01:45 | stuff they don't allow you to publish,
really shouldn't be published anyway.
| | 01:48 | But there are cases where you may want
to do something on your website, like for
| | 01:52 | instance, add Google ads,
that you just can't do.
| | 01:55 | WordPress.com comes with a
preconfigured Theme Library.
| | 01:59 | In WordPress a theme is what decides what
your website looks like, and how it behaves.
| | 02:04 | In WordPress.com you can only use the
themes that come with WordPress.com.
| | 02:09 | It's a large library, but it's limited,
and you can't really make your own
| | 02:12 | themes and redesign the
website exactly to your liking.
| | 02:16 | WordPress.com also has predefined functionality.
| | 02:19 | When you hear people talk about
WordPress, you hear a lot of talk about
| | 02:22 | something called Plugins.
| | 02:24 | Well in WordPress.com
there's no such thing as Plugins.
| | 02:27 | Plugins are small applications that you can add
to WordPress self-hosting to add functionality.
| | 02:33 | But in WordPress.com you have the
functionality that's available in the
| | 02:36 | system, and that's it.
| | 02:37 | They add on new functionality all time,
but you can't add them on your own.
| | 02:42 | WordPress.com is pretty much a zero-hassle
environment, which means all you have
| | 02:46 | to care about is publishing your content.
| | 02:48 | Automatic will do the rest of the hard
work. And finally, WordPress.com allows
| | 02:53 | you to import content from self-hosting
and from other services.
| | 02:57 | In fact a lot of big blogging services,
have gone belly up as of late and many
| | 03:01 | of them have moved all their
blogs over to WordPress.com.
| | 03:04 | So it's a very rapidly growing platform,
and there's a lot of good import-export
| | 03:09 | functionality in there.
| | 03:10 | So if you already own a blog
somewhere else and you want to move to
| | 03:13 | WordPress, it's easy to do.
| | 03:16 | Now let's look at WordPress
self-hosting for comparison.
| | 03:19 | A self-hosted WordPress site is
managed by you, that means that you're
| | 03:22 | responsible for buying a hosting
package, or having a server up and running
| | 03:26 | and you've to keep up the maintenance of
that server and pay whatever bills come with it.
| | 03:31 | A WordPress self-hosted site is
therefore also maintained by you.
| | 03:35 | So if anything goes wrong, you're on
the hook for it and you have to fix it
| | 03:38 | yourself or you've to
hire someone else to do it.
| | 03:41 | However, it's not all bad.
| | 03:43 | Because it's managed by you, there
are no content restrictions and you can
| | 03:46 | do whatever you want.
| | 03:47 | You can post any kind of content you
want and it won't cost anything extra and
| | 03:51 | you can add features like
Google AdSense with no problems.
| | 03:54 | WordPress self-hosting also allows
you to install and use any theme.
| | 03:58 | So for instance, my company makes
advanced WordPress setups on websites for
| | 04:03 | other companies. And what we do is, we
setup a WordPress self-hosted site, and
| | 04:07 | then we create a custom theme just for
that site that no one else has, and that
| | 04:12 | fits exactly what the user wants.
| | 04:15 | Likewise, you can add new functionality
to WordPress self-hosted sites, through
| | 04:19 | plugins and through functions.
| | 04:21 | That means that though you don't get all
the advanced features of WordPress.com,
| | 04:25 | you can build even fancier features
yourself, or you can find the same
| | 04:30 | features and one of the millions of
plug-ins available on the Internet.
| | 04:34 | Because WordPress as a self-hosted
solution is self-hosted, you get all the
| | 04:38 | hassle and all the control you want.
| | 04:41 | That means things can go wrong
and you're on the hook for them.
| | 04:44 | But at the same time, you can really
control what's going on in your website, and
| | 04:48 | set it up exactly the way you
want it to get the most out of it.
| | 04:52 | And finally, just like with WordPress.
com, WordPress self-hosting allows you to
| | 04:56 | import and export content.
| | 04:58 | So if you have a blog on WordPress.com
already, and you want to move to self-hosting,
| | 05:02 | you can simply grab the content from the
WordPress.com site and move it
| | 05:06 | over to your self-hosted site and it'll
work fine. The same goes for Blogger,
| | 05:10 | and Tumblr and all these other websites, too.
| | 05:13 | These are just some other differences
between WordPress.com and WordPress as a
| | 05:17 | self-hosted solution.
| | 05:18 | But it should give you a general idea
of the differences and both the benefits
| | 05:23 | and the drawbacks of each solution.
| | 05:25 | Deciding what option is best for you
boils down to an assessment of what you
| | 05:29 | need and what is available.
| | 05:30 | But like I said, you can always switch
around if you find that your original
| | 05:34 | choice was not the right one.
| | 05:36 | In this course, we'll focus on creating free
websites or blogs using the service offered
| | 05:42 | by WordPress.com. If you're interested in
| | 05:43 | hosting WordPress on your own server
or your own hosting plan for more control,
| | 05:49 | you should go check out my other course,
WordPress.com Essential Training,
| | 05:53 | right here in the Lynda.com
Online Training Library.
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2. Getting Started with WordPress.comSetting up an account| 00:00 | The first step to creating a WordPress-based
website hosted under WordPress.com
| | 00:04 | is to setup an account.
| | 00:06 | You can setup as many accounts as you
like under different e-mail addresses and
| | 00:10 | you can also host as many WordPress
sites as you like under one account.
| | 00:14 | My suggestion to you is that you
create one core account that you will use
| | 00:18 | for all your sites.
| | 00:20 | To get started, go to WordPress.com
and click on one of the Sign Up buttons.
| | 00:24 | You'll find one here in the toolbar,
there's a big orange one down here and
| | 00:28 | there's also a link down
here that says Sign up now.
| | 00:31 | Click on any of them and
you'll get to the Sign Up page.
| | 00:33 | On the Sign Up page you can setup an
account and setup a blog at the same time,
| | 00:39 | but in this case we're just going
to setup a Username so we can get a
| | 00:43 | WordPress.com account.
| | 00:44 | So I'll click on this link here that
says Sign up for just a username, and then
| | 00:49 | I can create my Username,
my Password, and get started.
| | 00:53 | So I'll plugin a Username, I'm going
to use, in this case samocanews, because
| | 00:58 | that's going to be the name of our site.
| | 01:00 | I'll set a Password and make sure
this is a fairly strong password, but one
| | 01:04 | that you can remember--usually with
numbers and may be a symbol or two--and
| | 01:12 | then give an e-mail address.
| | 01:13 | Now it's important that you use an email
address you actually have access to and
| | 01:17 | not an email address you haven't setup yet.
| | 01:19 | In this case I'm going to use info@samoca.org,
but you have to use an email
| | 01:26 | address you actually own for this.
| | 01:27 | Then you can choose to click the
Follow our blog to learn about new
| | 01:31 | themes, features, and other news
which is basically sign-up to the
| | 01:35 | WordPress.com newsletter.
| | 01:37 | That's optional, you can do it if you
want, or not do if you don't want. And most
| | 01:41 | importantly you should really click
on this link down here to read the
| | 01:45 | fascinating Terms of Service.
| | 01:47 | And you can open it in a separate window
and read it. It's long and tedious, but
| | 01:53 | to be honest with you, you should
really read all this stuff, so you know what
| | 01:55 | you're signing up for.
| | 01:57 | Once you've filled out the form and read
the fascinating Terms of Service, click
| | 02:01 | Sign Up, and the process begins.
| | 02:03 | Now that you've signed up, WordPress.com
will send you an e-mail to the e-mail
| | 02:08 | address you provided and then you'll have
to activate your account through that e-mail.
| | 02:12 | In the meantime, you can fill up the
rest of your profile with your first and
| | 02:15 | last name and a little bio of yourself.
| | 02:18 | In this case, I'm just going to fill in the
name of the organization I'm going to use.
| | 02:21 | We just call it SAMOCA and then no last
name and we'll leave the bio for later, and
| | 02:28 | then I click Save Profile, and
now I have to wait for that e-mail.
| | 02:32 | As you can see in my e-mail reader,
I've got an e-mail from WordPress.com that
| | 02:37 | says Activate samocanews.
| | 02:39 | I'll click on it, and in this e-mail
there is a simple link to the activation.
| | 02:43 | So I'll just follow that link and my
account gets activated on WordPress.com.
| | 02:49 | Now that I've setup an account, I can
start following other blogs, so that I can
| | 02:53 | see what other people are doing.
| | 02:54 | And on this front page here, I can
choose my interests and then WordPress.com
| | 02:59 | will start suggesting blogs for me to follow.
| | 03:01 | So I can pick anything I like here.
I really like Art & Design, Crafts & Home,
| | 03:06 | Culture, Entertainment, and maybe Fashion.
| | 03:11 | And now because I've selected these
things, WordPress will start selecting
| | 03:14 | blogs that exist on WordPress.com and suggest
them to me when I come and login to WordPress.com.
| | 03:21 | You've now created an account on WordPress.com.
| | 03:23 | When you login to this account, you
can create new blogs and websites under
| | 03:27 | WordPress.com and also visit and
comment on other blogs and websites that
| | 03:31 | exist in the system.
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| Setting up a new blog or web site| 00:00 | Once you have an account with WordPress.com
you can start setting up blogs and websites.
| | 00:05 | You can set up one or several sites all of
which can be accessed through this one account.
| | 00:10 | These websites are highly customizable
and apart from the WordPress.com web
| | 00:14 | address or URL, you can change all
the information on the site later.
| | 00:18 | So you don't really have to fret over
getting everything perfect right out of the gate.
| | 00:23 | To create a new blog or website under
WordPress.com, you start by going to
| | 00:27 | WordPress.com and logging in.
| | 00:29 | Now what happens if you don't
remember your username and password?
| | 00:33 | This happens to me a lot and it
can happen to other people too.
| | 00:36 | Well, if you don't remember it, you can
simply go to the toolbar here at the top
| | 00:41 | and click the Forgot Password? button.
| | 00:45 | This will take you to a form where you
can enter either your Username or even
| | 00:49 | your E-mail address so if you forgot
both your password and your username you
| | 00:53 | can still retrieve it.
| | 00:54 | If you fill in the Username or the E-mail
address here, WordPress will send you
| | 00:59 | an e-mail with your Username
and a link to reset your password.
| | 01:03 | Once you have that, you
can come back and log in.
| | 01:06 | So I will go back to WordPress.com and
enter our Username or our E-mail address,
| | 01:14 | and the Password and now I can log in.
| | 01:18 | If I'm on my own computer, so on my
home computer or my laptop, I tend to check
| | 01:23 | this Remember me box, so that I don't have
to keep logging in every time I go to this.
| | 01:29 | However if I'm using a public computer
or if I'm using someone else's computer
| | 01:33 | or a computer at a workplace where other
people can access it, I would keep this
| | 01:38 | unchecked so that other people
can't go in and mess with my account.
| | 01:42 | Finally, I'll click Log In, and
I'm now logged in to WordPress.com.
| | 01:48 | Now because I'm using Chrome as my
browser, Chrome is asking me if I want Chrome
| | 01:53 | to remember my password.
| | 01:55 | I do, so I'll click Save password.
| | 01:57 | This will also happen in Safari
and Internet Explorer and Firefox.
| | 02:02 | Once I'm logged in, I have all my
options available and in this case, I just
| | 02:07 | want to make a new blog.
| | 02:08 | Now in the process of setting up your
account, you could've chosen to create a
| | 02:12 | blog already in which case it would
appear here on the list, but since I didn't
| | 02:17 | do that yet, I am now
going to create another blog.
| | 02:19 | So I'll click on the Create
Another Blog button under My Blogs.
| | 02:25 | And I'm taken to the form
where I can create a blog.
| | 02:28 | Here I have to enter a Blog Address and
this will become the permanent URL for
| | 02:33 | this blog, so you have to get this one right.
| | 02:39 | WordPress will now check whether or
not that URL is available and, this is a
| | 02:43 | fairly new feature, you can also
choose to buy a domain if you want to.
| | 02:47 | So in this case WordPress is
suggesting that I buy samocanews.com for $17 a
| | 02:53 | year, and if you click on this drop-down,
you will see there are other options too.
| | 02:56 | I can just buy samocanews.me for $24
or .com or .net or .org if I want to.
| | 03:03 | In this case I don't want to, I want
to keep this samocanews.WordPress.com
| | 03:08 | domain, so I'll just scroll down
and then I'll give the blog a name.
| | 03:13 | Now this is what you can change later.
| | 03:15 | So if you give it a name now and you
don't like it, you can always go back and
| | 03:19 | change it to something else.
| | 03:20 | In this case, I want to call it SAMOCA
News, and then I can continue down the list.
| | 03:27 | Under Privacy, I can decide whether I
want my blog to be viewable to everyone or
| | 03:32 | viewable to everyone, but
block to search engines.
| | 03:35 | If you want to do that--I don't know
why you would want to do that, but some
| | 03:38 | people do--or if I want the blog to be private.
| | 03:41 | If I set the blog to private, it means
only people I invite can actually see the
| | 03:45 | content and for the rest of the
world, it appears as it's not there.
| | 03:49 | In this case, I want to keep it
viewable to everyone and I'm going to be
| | 03:53 | blogging in English.
| | 03:54 | If you use this drop-down, you can see,
you can blog in pretty much any language
| | 03:58 | you want, but English is good for me.
| | 04:01 | And finally, I need to decide if I want to get
the Free option or if I want to do the Upgrade.
| | 04:07 | The Upgrade gives you a bunch of
extra features like Domain & Mapping which
| | 04:11 | means that you have something like
samocanews.com or another special domain.
| | 04:16 | It gives you 10 gigabytes of extra
space to upload your content in addition to
| | 04:20 | the standard 3 gigabytes
you get with the free account.
| | 04:23 | You get no ads on the site anywhere
and you get features like Custom Design
| | 04:28 | which allows you to upload custom style
sheets and also VideoPress which allows
| | 04:33 | you to upload videos directly to WordPress.com.
| | 04:37 | The Upgrade is $99 a year which is
truly 40% cheaper than if you buy each
| | 04:42 | of these featured separately, but it's
something you have to decide whether you want to do.
| | 04:47 | In my opinion, if you're going to
buy this, you're better off having a
| | 04:51 | self-hosted site because then you have
more control, but for some people the
| | 04:56 | upgrade in WordPress.com makes more sense.
| | 04:59 | For now, I'm going to go with the Free version.
| | 05:01 | So I'm just going to click Create Blog
under the Free and the blog is created.
| | 05:07 | So now I own samocanews.wordpress.com
and I can click Visit my dashboard or I
| | 05:13 | can go directly to the site.
| | 05:14 | You've now created a new blog
or website under WordPress.com.
| | 05:22 | If you want to, you can go back and repeat
the steps to create another blog or website.
| | 05:26 | Just remember that you can only use a
particular blog URL or domain once, so new
| | 05:31 | blogs will always have different addresses.
| | 05:34 | If you've set your Privacy Settings to
Public, the blog will now be indexed by
| | 05:38 | WordPress.com and will also be
available for those major search engines, which
| | 05:42 | means once you start blogging,
people can read what you have to say.
| | 05:46 | And as with nearly everything else in
WordPress, you can change your Privacy
| | 05:49 | Settings at any time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Navigating the WordPress.com back end| 00:00 | A WordPress blog or website has two
main parts, a front end which is what you
| | 00:05 | see here and is what the public sees
when they visit your site, and a back end
| | 00:11 | which is where you write articles, post
photos and videos, moderate comments and
| | 00:15 | control the look and functionality of the site.
| | 00:17 | Both the front end and back end are
accessible through any Web browser.
| | 00:22 | Having a solid understanding of how the
WordPress back end works will save you a
| | 00:26 | lot of time when you want to get things done.
| | 00:28 | There are several ways of accessing the
back end of your site on wordpress.com.
| | 00:33 | Once you've logged in to wordpress.com
you can either go to My Blogs here and
| | 00:37 | then click on the Dashboard under the
blog you want to visit, or you can go up to
| | 00:42 | the toolbar and all the way to the
right here, you will find your username and
| | 00:47 | then you can scroll down and
find the name of your site,
| | 00:49 | hover over it and then select Dashboard.
| | 00:50 | This will also bring you to the same Dashboard.
| | 00:56 | When you first set up a new site
on wordpress.com and you login to
| | 01:00 | the Dashboard, you get this big
box at the very top that says,
| | 01:03 | Welcome to WordPress.com!
| | 01:05 | and it has more information about WordPress.com.
| | 01:08 | And it even has this instructional video
that you should really watch that tells
| | 01:12 | you a bit about how WordPress
works and what you can do with it.
| | 01:15 | It also has helpful resources for
things like writing a post, the General
| | 01:19 | settings your profile and where to buy upgrades.
| | 01:23 | And it has links to other
information about WordPress in general.
| | 01:27 | If you like to have this up, and it's a
good idea to do that in the beginning,
| | 01:31 | you will always have a way of
accessing this important information.
| | 01:34 | But it gets a little annoying because
it takes up a lot of space, so you can
| | 01:38 | always click the Remind Me Later button
to hide it and then show up again the next
| | 01:42 | day, or you can click on Hide the
screen and it will just disappear.
| | 01:46 | Directly underneath have another
yellow box that tells you that you can still
| | 01:50 | buy this samocanews.com domain and
attach it to the site for $17 a year.
| | 01:57 | If you don't want to see that, you
can also hide that flag because you
| | 02:00 | can always do that operation
later in a different place inside the
| | 02:03 | WordPress Dashboard.
| | 02:04 | So I am going to hide both of these.
I'll click quick Remind Me Later for the
| | 02:08 | Welcome to WordPress.com site.
| | 02:10 | And I will hide the warning about the domain
and then you can see the regular Dashboard.
| | 02:17 | At the top of the dashboard you have the
wordpress.com toolbar which has lots of
| | 02:21 | functionality we will cover later.
| | 02:23 | And then inside the Dashboard, you have
two main areas. You have the Sidebar on
| | 02:27 | the left side here, which provides links
and fly-out menus to all the actions you
| | 02:31 | can do inside WordPress.
| | 02:34 | And then on the right here you have the
actual contextual elements for each of them.
| | 02:38 | So as you jump around here, let's say
I want to go and create a new post, you
| | 02:45 | get a new window with new
content that you can work on.
| | 02:48 | The left sidebar has three main sections.
| | 02:51 | At the top, it has the
Dashboard link and Store link.
| | 02:54 | This brings you either to the
Dashboard that shows you overview of your sites
| | 02:59 | including what's happening right now on
your site; you have the QuickPress box
| | 03:03 | which allows you to write a quick
post; you see a Recent Drafts, Recent
| | 03:07 | Comments; the stuff you have on WordPress.com;
your Stats and what's going on, on
| | 03:13 | WordPress.com right now.
| | 03:15 | And you have the Store where you can
buy upgrades; you can buy that new domain;
| | 03:21 | upgrade the VideoPress; you can
upload content you can activate the Custom
| | 03:25 | Design feature; buy space upgrades;
take away the ads; or redirect your sites.
| | 03:31 | Below Dashboard and Store we have the
next main section which is the Content section.
| | 03:36 | Here we can create new posts, new media,
new links, new pages, you can moderate
| | 03:41 | comments and manage forums, polls and ratings.
| | 03:45 | So this is where you will do most of
your work, because this is where you create
| | 03:48 | content for your site.
| | 03:50 | The last section in the sidebar is the
section that handles how WordPress works.
| | 03:56 | So Setting & Configuration. Under
Appearance you can handle Themes, Widgets,
| | 04:00 | Menus, options like Header, Pictures and
Background, Images and stuff like that.
| | 04:06 | You can manage the users, so you can
either change your own personal settings or
| | 04:10 | you can add new users or invite people.
| | 04:12 | Under Tools you can manage tools that
are attached to WordPress and finally
| | 04:17 | under Settings you can set things like
the name of the site, how the site behaves,
| | 04:21 | whether or not people can comment on
things, and other functions like that.
| | 04:26 | What's cool about this user
interface is that it's highly customizable.
| | 04:29 | I will show use as I will go back to
Dashboard so you can see what I am talking about.
| | 04:34 | First off, the Sidebar is collapsible.
| | 04:37 | So if you scroll down you see there's
this is button at the very bottom of the
| | 04:40 | sidebar that says Collapse Menu.
| | 04:41 | If you click on you collapse the
menu and replace it with simple icons.
| | 04:46 | If you hover over the icons, you still
get the flyout menus so you can select all
| | 04:50 | the options, it just takes up less space.
| | 04:53 | This also gets triggered, if the window
you're viewing WordPress in is smaller.
| | 04:57 | So if you reduce the size of this
window, you will see that when we get to
| | 05:01 | certain point the menu automatically collapses.
| | 05:05 | This is called response of the site
and it means that the site is literally
| | 05:09 | responding to the window
you're using to view the site.
| | 05:14 | Inside each of the windows, you also
have these tabs that you can actually
| | 05:18 | grab and move around.
| | 05:19 | So if you want Recent Drafts to be over
QuickPress for instance, you simply grab
| | 05:24 | QuickPress and move it under Recent Drafts.
| | 05:26 | You can also collapse each section by
clicking this Down arrow, or you can
| | 05:31 | even hide it by going to Screen Options and
selecting what you want or don't want to see.
| | 05:36 | So for instance, if I never use
QuickPress I can simply unselect and it goes away.
| | 05:42 | The Screen Options function is
actually really important and a lot of people
| | 05:45 | don't know about it.
| | 05:46 | So what happens is they will see
something demoed, for instance in this video or
| | 05:50 | another video or they will see
a grab of it on the Internet,
| | 05:53 | and then they go, but I
don't have that function.
| | 05:55 | Chances are, it's just turned off and
all you need to do is when you're in that
| | 05:58 | view click on screen options, and
you'll find the function you are looking for
| | 06:02 | listed, but it's unchecked.
| | 06:04 | And when you check it, and
will reappear in the view.
| | 06:07 | Screen Options is available for
every single view inside WordPress, so no
| | 06:11 | matter where you go,
| | 06:12 | let's say we go Add New posts, you
will see we still have Screen Options here
| | 06:17 | with all the options so we
can turn them on and off.
| | 06:19 | So I can turn on-off Excerpts and
Trackbacks or Discussions or Slugs and
| | 06:23 | whatever I want and I can reconfigure
my window to fit my Preferences so I can
| | 06:28 | move Categories up to the
top or move it down again.
| | 06:32 | And whatever I do is saved with my profile.
| | 06:36 | Finally, if you are confused about
anything or you feel like you don't understand
| | 06:39 | what's going on, there's always this
Help tab that you can click on that will
| | 06:43 | give you help information
about the page you're currently on.
| | 06:47 | So when I'm on the Edit New post page,
again information about how to customize
| | 06:51 | my display and what the Title and
Post Editor is all about to publish box,
| | 06:56 | Discussion settings and so on.
| | 06:59 | The WordPress Dashboard, which is also
known as the admin area or back end, is
| | 07:04 | where you will do most of your work.
| | 07:06 | As with everything else in WordPress it's
highly customizable and easy to understand.
| | 07:10 | My tip is this:
| | 07:12 | If you're ever confused about what to
do or where to go to do it when you're in
| | 07:16 | the back end, just read what it says on the page.
| | 07:19 | In most cases, it's spelled out
right in front of you and if you're still
| | 07:23 | confused, click the Help button.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The WordPress.com toolbar| 00:00 | Whenever you visit WordPress.com, you'll see
the WordPress toolbar at the top of your screen.
| | 00:06 | From this toolbar, you can access your
own WordPress.com sites, interact with
| | 00:10 | other sites and get quick links to common tasks.
| | 00:13 | The WordPress.com toolbar has changed
several times over the past years, and
| | 00:17 | is likely to change again, but the
overall functionality and philosophy of the
| | 00:21 | toolbar always face the same: to
provide quick and easy access to the services
| | 00:25 | and functions you use the most from anywhere.
| | 00:27 | Let's take a closer look.
| | 00:29 | Now the WordPress.com toolbar reacts
to where you are on the site and changes
| | 00:34 | depending on where you are
and what status you're in.
| | 00:37 | So for example, when you're not logged
in, the toolbar is where you log in and
| | 00:41 | it's also where you search for things.
| | 00:42 | So on the left-hand side here, we
have the login information that we saw
| | 00:47 | previously, and on the very far right,
we have a Search box, where you can click
| | 00:51 | Search and then search for anything
inside all of WordPress.com sites and blogs.
| | 00:58 | Once you're logged in, the toolbar changes.
| | 01:02 | Now because we're not in the Dashboard,
what we're seeing is the toolbar for
| | 01:07 | general WordPress.com.
| | 01:08 | So this toolbar will appear whenever
you're at anywhere inside WordPress.
| | 01:13 | Right now since we're on the front
page of WordPress.com, all we have is the
| | 01:16 | WordPress logo on the side here that
allows us to write a New Post, Read Blogs,
| | 01:21 | go to Freshly Pressed, which is the
most current updated content on blogs,
| | 01:25 | search by topic, look by posts I've flagged
that I like, follow blogs or look at my stats.
| | 01:34 | On the far right here, we have a button
that takes us directly to create a new
| | 01:37 | post, and I also have a button for my
own profile where I can see information
| | 01:41 | about myself and I can see my
own sites and access them directly.
| | 01:45 | If I go to a site on WordPress.com while
I'm logged in, so let's say I go to the
| | 01:52 | Freshly Pressed and then go check out
this article about the Hunger Games, the
| | 01:56 | new movie, you'll see that my toolbar changes.
| | 02:00 | Now in addition to the WordPress
logo, that still has the same links,
| | 02:04 | it also has a link directly to this
post that I'm currently looking at.
| | 02:08 | I can follow this blog which means, I
basically Favorite it, so that in the
| | 02:12 | future whenever they post new
content, I'll see it in my Dashboard.
| | 02:16 | I can click the Like button which
functions much like the Facebook Like button
| | 02:20 | although it's in WordPress.com and I can
click this Reblog button that allows me
| | 02:25 | to republish this content under my blog
in kind of a shortened format, so people
| | 02:29 | can see it on my blog and then jump
directly to the blog where it's at.
| | 02:33 | On the right side nothing changes, I still have
New Post and I have the link to my own profile.
| | 02:38 | If I want to go back to the
WordPress.com front end, I simply click the
| | 02:43 | WordPress logo and I jump back to the front.
| | 02:47 | From here, I can do things like write a new
post without actually going to my own site.
| | 02:52 | So I will click New Post and from here
I can write a new post directly inside
| | 02:57 | the WordPress.com main frame without
going to my Dashboard and I can also post a
| | 03:02 | photo, video, a quote or a link if I want to.
| | 03:06 | If I want to go to the back end of my
site, you'll see that my toolbar will
| | 03:10 | change dramatically.
| | 03:12 | So if I go to My Blogs and click on
Dashboard, you will see the toolbar changes
| | 03:18 | to conform to where I am right now.
| | 03:20 | From the left, I still have the button
for the WordPress front end where I can
| | 03:24 | still do the same things, but now I
also have a button that relates directly to
| | 03:29 | the site I'm currently logged in as,
in this case the SAMOCA News site.
| | 03:33 | From here I have the link to the
Dashboard, I can create new posts, pages,
| | 03:37 | media or link, I can moderate my
comments, configure my menus and configure my
| | 03:42 | widgets, and I can also jump to a
random post within my site, or report my site
| | 03:48 | as mature if I decide to post mature content,
and I can see what theme I'm currently using.
| | 03:54 | Next to it, although you can't really
see it right now, this dotted line is
| | 03:58 | actually a graph of your stats.
| | 04:00 | Now of course this is a new site and it
has no visitors, so the stats are zero,
| | 04:04 | but as the site becomes popular,
you'll see this graph starting to become
| | 04:08 | jagged, so you can see the traffic on your site.
| | 04:11 | On the right, we have a big button that
allows us to upgrade to Pro which means
| | 04:15 | we get all those new features like more
space and VideoPress and all those kind
| | 04:19 | of stuff, and I can click create a New
Post which takes me directly to the post
| | 04:23 | view, and I can manage my profile.
| | 04:27 | The WordPress.com toolbar provides
quick and easy access to the functions and
| | 04:30 | actions you're most likely to use
when surfing WordPress.com sites or when
| | 04:35 | managing your own site.
| | 04:37 | Getting acquainted with the options and
making the toolbar part of your regular
| | 04:40 | routine will save you lots of time, trust me.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Building a ProfileEditing your profile| 00:00 | When you setup an account with WordPress.com
you're also setting up a public profile.
| | 00:05 | The information in this profile will be
attached when you post pages or posts on
| | 00:09 | your blog or comment on yours
or other WordPresser's blogs.
| | 00:13 | Your public profile can contain as much
or as little information as you want and
| | 00:17 | can be edited at any time.
| | 00:19 | When you make changes to your public
profile, these changes are immediately
| | 00:22 | reflected in any location
where your profile is displayed.
| | 00:25 | There are two main ways to
access your profile when you're logged
| | 00:29 | into WordPress.com.
| | 00:30 | You can either do it through the
WordPress.com toolbar, by going to your profile
| | 00:34 | here in the upper-right corner and
clicking Edit My Profile, or you can go to the
| | 00:40 | Dashboard and then scroll down
to Users and click My Profile.
| | 00:45 | Both will take you to the
same place, My Public Profile.
| | 00:49 | At the very top of this page you'll
see an important piece of information.
| | 00:55 | Information entered below will be
displayed publicly on your profile and in
| | 01:00 | Gravatar Hovercards that means anything
you put on this page will be displayed
| | 01:04 | publicly and people can access it.
| | 01:07 | So it's a good idea to not share
information you don't want, like e-mail
| | 01:11 | addresses you don't want people to
know about, or passwords, or personal
| | 01:15 | information you don't want
to share with anyone else.
| | 01:18 | That said, it's really important that
you fill out this profile because it's
| | 01:22 | annoying for people to go to a blog
or website on the Internet and then not
| | 01:26 | be able to find out who the person is
behind the scenes who's actually doing the work.
| | 01:31 | Normally when you fill this out
you'd fill it out with your own
| | 01:34 | personal information.
| | 01:35 | So for instance, under Basic Details
if I was filling this out for myself I'd
| | 01:39 | put information about myself.
| | 01:41 | And notice here at the top that under
Username you can now change your username.
| | 01:45 | This is a fairly new feature that wasn't
always available, so you can now change
| | 01:50 | your username if you want to,
although I don't recommend it.
| | 01:52 | You usually pick a username
you want and you stick with it.
| | 01:55 | Below that you just fill
in your regular information.
| | 01:58 | So you'll fill in your first name,
the last name and your full name.
| | 02:04 | This is because some people have odd names
with middle names and all that kind of stuff.
| | 02:09 | I don't, but I will still fill it out.
| | 02:13 | And then below that you have this box
that says, Display name publicly as.
| | 02:18 | That's because in some cases people use
monikers instead of real names, like I
| | 02:22 | do, or they may have a strange name
where they have a hundred syllables in the
| | 02:26 | name and they want to shorten it down
or they might not want to display their
| | 02:29 | middle name or shorten it to something else.
| | 02:32 | In my case, because no one ever spells my
first name correctly, one of my friends
| | 02:36 | came up with the new way of spelling it
which is the one I use for pretty much
| | 02:39 | everything these days.
| | 02:41 | So instead of saying Morten, I spell
it out the way it's pronounced, mor10, and
| | 02:46 | that's how I like to display my name publicly.
| | 02:49 | However, if I wanted it any different way
I could just change it to whatever I want.
| | 02:54 | Now in this project we're going to be
working on a site for this Gallery,
| | 02:57 | the SAMOCA Gallery.
| | 02:58 | So instead of putting in my
information I'm going to put in SAMOCA and
| | 03:03 | then delete the Last name, delete
the Full name, and then display it
| | 03:06 | publicly as SAMOCA News.
| | 03:07 | Because that the name of the site and
people should know that when I comment on
| | 03:13 | their blogs from the site, I'm
commenting on behalf of SAMOCA News.
| | 03:16 | I can also put in the location of my
gallery so I'll say Ventura, California.
| | 03:26 | And then I can put in a bio.
| | 03:27 | Now, this is important. If you put
something in the About You box which basically
| | 03:32 | serves as the Bio box for your profile,
you'll trigger a function in WordPress
| | 03:36 | that displays your bio on the site.
| | 03:39 | What it does is, it appends your bio
along with your picture and some very short
| | 03:43 | information to every post
you post inside your site.
| | 03:47 | So whenever you write an article either
at the bottom or the top of the article
| | 03:51 | you'll see a little box that displays
your picture and then your name and then
| | 03:54 | your bio, so people know who wrote the post.
| | 03:57 | If you don't want that to appear simply
don't put anything in the About You box
| | 04:01 | and it won't appear.
| | 04:02 | I want it to appear, so I'm going to
paste in some biographical information
| | 04:05 | about the gallery, and then just
edit it down, so that it looks nice.
| | 04:10 | And now I've filled in my basic details,
so I can update my profile. And once I
| | 04:15 | save anything in WordPress, WordPress
will give me this nice little warning at
| | 04:19 | the top saying Profile saved or
Post saved or whatever to tell me that
| | 04:23 | something has changed.
| | 04:24 | This is good, so I know that when I
click the button that actually worked.
| | 04:28 | Below the Basic Details is Contacts.
| | 04:31 | And I just want to reiterate that
anything you put here becomes public
| | 04:35 | information, so people can find it.
| | 04:37 | So if you signed up for WordPress.com
using your private e-mail account, or one
| | 04:42 | you don't want to get a lot of spam,
or you don't want people to have direct
| | 04:46 | access to, you want to put the public e-mail
address here instead the one that
| | 04:50 | you want people to use when they contact you.
| | 04:53 | In this case I want to use the same address.
| | 04:54 | I'll just say info@samoca.org, and below
here you can put in other contact means
| | 05:01 | that you can use if you want people to
contact you, like AIM or Google Talk or
| | 05:06 | ICQ and so on and so on.
| | 05:08 | All this information will be
displayed publicly with your profile, which is
| | 05:11 | great for something like an organization,
because then I can add a mobile phone
| | 05:16 | number or work phone number to the
organization, and then people can see that
| | 05:20 | and call me based on it.
| | 05:21 | I'm going to skip the Photos for the
next movie, but at the very bottom here you
| | 05:25 | have two more important boxes.
| | 05:27 | The first one is Links.
| | 05:29 | Links allows you to link all the
websites to your profile so you can show off
| | 05:33 | all the websites you're working on.
| | 05:35 | For example, if you have both a
company website and a blog, you might want to
| | 05:40 | add your company website to this list,
so people, when they find your profile, can
| | 05:44 | see that you're also
associated with these other websites.
| | 05:47 | You simply put in a URL for the website,
you want to link to and also a title
| | 05:52 | which is what will actually display as
the name of the website, and then you can
| | 05:55 | click Add link and you can
add more links if you want to.
| | 05:58 | At the very bottom you have this
Verified External Services function.
| | 06:02 | The Verified External Services allow
you to verify your account to other
| | 06:07 | accounts from other verified sources
like Facebook, and Flickr, and Foursquare,
| | 06:13 | and Twitter, and so on.
| | 06:14 | What happens is, when you verify your
account with any of these other accounts
| | 06:19 | you're giving people a way of seeing
that this account is associated with all
| | 06:23 | these other ones so that probably means
that this is the right person. Because
| | 06:26 | as we all know, some people will go on
the Internet and create fake accounts and
| | 06:30 | pretend to be someone else.
| | 06:32 | But if you link all these things
together then it becomes easy for people to see
| | 06:36 | that this is the same person
across all these different platforms.
| | 06:40 | The best way to illustrate that is just to
show you my personal profile on Gravatar.
| | 06:44 | So if I go up to gravatar.com/mor10,
you'll see that here is a picture of me
| | 06:51 | with my name, the way I set it, under
Display publicly as so mor10 and my short
| | 06:58 | bio and the other sites I link to under Linked.
| | 07:02 | And then up here we have verified
services, so you can see I verified through
| | 07:06 | Twitter, Flickr and LinkedIn.
| | 07:09 | That way people, when they land on this
page, can see that this is probably me
| | 07:12 | because all these things are linked together.
| | 07:15 | Once you've set up your links, your
verified accounts, and your contacts and
| | 07:20 | your basic information, remember to
click Update Profile, so that you update all
| | 07:24 | the information to put in.
| | 07:25 | If you don't click Update Profile,
anything you put in will simply disappear and
| | 07:30 | you have to start over.
| | 07:30 | A WordPress.com profile is the public
information attached to your account.
| | 07:35 | In other words, it lets people know who you
are when you post pages, post or comments.
| | 07:40 | It's up to you to decide how much or how
little you want to share about yourself
| | 07:44 | in the profile. And like I said in the
beginning, you can always change anything
| | 07:48 | in your profile later.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating profile images with Gravatar| 00:00 | When you create a profile and upload
the profile photo on your WordPress.com
| | 00:04 | account you're actually creating a profile and
uploading a profile photo on Gravatar.com.
| | 00:09 | What you see here is my personal
profile on gravatar.com that was created
| | 00:14 | through WordPress.com.
| | 00:16 | Gravatar.com is an open-source
depository for profile and avatar
| | 00:20 | information that is linked to your
e-mail account and can be source by
| | 00:24 | other open-source applications.
| | 00:26 | In English, this means if you visit a
site that has Gravatar support and leave a
| | 00:30 | comment with your e-mail address attached,
| | 00:33 | the site will find your photo and
Bio Info on gravatar.com and attach it.
| | 00:37 | This is a great way to market yourself
on the Web, and because it's dynamic, you
| | 00:42 | can change both profile info and
profile image at any time and this information
| | 00:46 | will be changed on all the sites
that it's featured on instantly.
| | 00:50 | Let's take a closer look at how
WordPress.com and gravatar.com integrate.
| | 00:54 | I'll close this window and go back to
My DashBoard from the Wordpress.com site.
| | 01:00 | From here I'll go to Users and
My Profile to Edit My Profile.
| | 01:05 | And you'll see right now we
don't yet have a Gravatar.
| | 01:08 | The Gravatar appears here on the right-hand
side and to add a new gravatar, I'll
| | 01:12 | simply click Change your Gravatar and
that opens a New Window inside my current
| | 01:17 | window that displays gravatar.com.
| | 01:20 | From here I can now upload a Gravatar
or Avatar into the system. I can either
| | 01:25 | upload a New Image from my computer, I
can use a Web cam to take a picture right
| | 01:29 | now, I can post a link to a photo that
lives somewhere on Internet, or I can use
| | 01:34 | my latest WordPress.com Avatar if I had one.
| | 01:38 | In this case, I want to Upload
a New Image from My Computer.
| | 01:40 | So I'll click on that and then
navigate to the file, and I have it right here.
| | 01:45 | Now I already know that gravatar
wants to have a Completely Square image.
| | 01:49 | So I already made a square image
specifically for this purpose and I will Upload.
| | 01:53 | But, if your image isn't square, gravatar.com
will help you with that as you'll
| | 01:57 | see in the next step.
| | 01:58 | So I'll click Next and then I get a
Cropper where I can go in and change the
| | 02:04 | Cropping of my Image to fit whatever I want.
| | 02:07 | So if I uploaded an image that was, for
instance very tall, I can now Crop that
| | 02:11 | down to make it look the way I want it to.
| | 02:13 | I'll get a Small Preview and a
Large preview as I do this and when I'm
| | 02:17 | satisfied, I click on Crop and
Finish and I get to this page.
| | 02:23 | Here, I've to choose a Rating for my
Gravatar because the Gravatar will be
| | 02:27 | displayed all over the web. If I
chose to Upload a Profile Image that was
| | 02:31 | somehow offensive to someone,
| | 02:33 | I need to attach a rating to it, so
that Gravatar.com can figure out whether or
| | 02:37 | not should be displaying this gravatar
on the Internet in specific sites or not.
| | 02:42 | In this case, is just a logo so the
rating is a G rating so I'll click on
| | 02:47 | that and then I am done.
| | 02:48 | Now I can close this pop-up window and
Reload my Profile page and you'll see
| | 02:54 | that my new gravatar appears inside this window.
| | 02:57 | Now let's take a look at what this
looks like on gravatar.com itself.
| | 03:01 | So I'll jump over to gravatar.com and
up here you'll see that because I am
| | 03:08 | logged in on WordPress.com, I am also logged
in on gravatar.com already. So it says Hi!
| | 03:14 | SAMOCA News because that's the name
that I set as the display publicly as
| | 03:19 | inside WordPress.com.
| | 03:21 | Here I can go to My Account and from
here I can Manage My Gravatar, Edit My
| | 03:25 | Profile View My Profile and do other things.
| | 03:28 | So let's first View the Profile.
| | 03:30 | So I'll click View My Profile and
here you'll see the Public E-mail that we
| | 03:34 | set inside WordPress.com along with the
gravatar, the Name, Location and the Bio Information.
| | 03:41 | If I want to change any of this, I can
go to My Account and then I can click
| | 03:45 | Manage My Gravatars where I can Add New
E-mail Address or I can Add New Images.
| | 03:51 | Or I can go to Edit My Profile,
and here I can change all the Profile
| | 03:55 | Information and you'll notice that this
corresponds exactly to what's inside the WordPress.com.
| | 04:01 | So here we have First/Last Names,
just like First and Last Name.
| | 04:05 | We've Display Name, Location, and About Me,
same Display, Location, About Me and we
| | 04:13 | also have other things like My Images,
Contact Information, Verified Services,
| | 04:18 | Links, and Custom Background which is
Custom Background for gravatar.com.
| | 04:23 | So that's really the
only thing that's different.
| | 04:25 | I can also go in add new images because you
don't have to have just one image in gravatar.com.
| | 04:30 | I can go in here again and upload another
image that I have here, we'll upload this one.
| | 04:38 | And as you can see, because this image
is too big, I need to crop it and I'll
| | 04:44 | click on Crop and Finish.
| | 04:45 | I'll give it a rating, G rating is still Ok.
| | 04:49 | And now I can choose which image,
I want to use as my gravatar.
| | 04:53 | So I'll still choose the Main Logo Image,
confirm it and now when I go to View
| | 05:00 | My Profile and see its still there but
at any time down the road, if I want to
| | 05:05 | quickly swap it, I can simply go in
and swap to other image and that will
| | 05:09 | appear in its place.
| | 05:10 | You're WordPress.com profile is
identical to your gravatar.com profile.
| | 05:15 | This enables other sites that have
gravatars enabled to pull your profile
| | 05:19 | information such as an image, name,
other links, and bio information to their site
| | 05:24 | whenever you interact with them.
| | 05:25 | That's means when you leave a comment
on a WordPress blog, whether that be a
| | 05:30 | WordPress.com blog, a self-hosted
WordPress site or some other sites, your
| | 05:34 | gravatar image and your name
will show up next to that comment.
| | 05:38 | As a bonus, you'll get a nice little
profile page on gravatar.com with all the
| | 05:43 | information you want
people to be able to access.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modifying personal settings| 00:00 | WordPress.com provides a series of
Personal Settings for users to customize
| | 00:04 | their experience when
working in the back end admin area.
| | 00:07 | These settings don't have a direct
impact on the blog or site as other people
| | 00:11 | see it on the web, but affect how the
admin area looks, works and behaves.
| | 00:16 | These settings are user specific, so
if there are multiple users registered
| | 00:21 | to one blog or a site, each user can set his
or her own personal settings independently.
| | 00:26 | To get to the Personal Settings, log in
and go to Dashboard and then go to users
| | 00:32 | and Personal Settings.
| | 00:34 | Under the Personal Settings tab you
have a lot of different options you can
| | 00:38 | check on or off and some
selections you can make.
| | 00:40 | We'll just go through them from the top
so you can see what all this is about.
| | 00:44 | At the very top, you have a box called
Fun that just says Surprise me. (Fun mode.).
| | 00:49 | This is an optional thing you can turn
on or off, it doesn't actually change
| | 00:53 | anything, it just changes how
WordPress interacts with you.
| | 00:56 | If you turn it on, it will give you
some interesting stuff that happens.
| | 01:00 | I am not going to say what it is,
and it's not going to be shocking.
| | 01:04 | But, if you want to try it out,
just activate and see what happens.
| | 01:08 | Directly under Fun mode you have
this Instant Post Feedback option.
| | 01:12 | If this one is checked what happens
is once you create a new post, you'll
| | 01:15 | jump directly to the post view, so
what normal people will see when they go
| | 01:19 | to your website, and in the sidebar, you'll
get information about the post you just created.
| | 01:24 | This is a really good idea and I
think it's a very good improvement to
| | 01:28 | WordPress.com, so I would leave
this checked because it gives you more
| | 01:31 | information about what you're doing and
gives you an easy way of sharing it out
| | 01:35 | to the world, making quick changes if
you missed something, or just seeing what's
| | 01:39 | happening on your site.
| | 01:40 | Underneath Instant Post Feedback you
have Visual Editor, and it allows you to
| | 01:44 | Disable the visual editor when writing.
| | 01:47 | The only way I can describe
it, is by showing it to you.
| | 01:49 | So I'm going to open a new window and
create a new post and as you can see, in
| | 01:55 | the New Post window which will be
covered in more detail later you have two
| | 01:59 | tabs, you have the Visual tab and the HTML tab.
| | 02:02 | The Visual tab will show
text as its being entered.
| | 02:05 | So let's say, I write something that
should be bold, I can now highlight the
| | 02:10 | bold section and click the bold button and
you see it as bold here in the Visual Editor.
| | 02:15 | But if I go to the HTML view, you
see that rather than highlighting it as
| | 02:20 | bold, you see the actual HTML code that makes
the text bold, in this case, the strong tag.
| | 02:27 | By clicking the Disable Visual Editor
box, you're making it so that the only
| | 02:32 | tab available here is the HTML tab,
this is great for people who know HTML or
| | 02:37 | who don't like the Visual Editor view,
but for beginners I recommend leaving
| | 02:41 | this box unchecked.
| | 02:43 | The next one is Admin Color Scheme;
| | 02:45 | it literally changes the
color scheme of the Admin panel.
| | 02:48 | The default is gray but you can
change it to Blue and then the sidebar here
| | 02:53 | changes to blue and some other small
things change to blue, you can try it to
| | 02:57 | see what you like better.
| | 02:59 | Keyboard Shortcut enables
common moderation keyboard shortcuts.
| | 03:02 | To get more information, you
should click the More information link.
| | 03:06 | Basically it allows you to use your
keyboard to do quick comment moderation
| | 03:10 | which is very useful if
you have a lot of comments.
| | 03:12 | However, if you have a site that
doesn't have that many comments, it doesn't
| | 03:15 | really matter what you do.
| | 03:17 | You can try it, if you don't like it,
| | 03:18 | just turn it back off again.
| | 03:19 | Below Keyboard Shortcuts, there is a text
here that says something about Text Messaging.
| | 03:24 | Now if you go to Text Messaging
Settings, which is a different page, you can
| | 03:28 | activate a function inside WordPress.com
that allows you to send text messages
| | 03:33 | to your blog that then get posted right away.
| | 03:35 | This requires a little bit more setup
and like I said, you have to click this
| | 03:38 | Text Messaging Settings
button to go to those settings.
| | 03:42 | Below that you have the
Twitter API, and this is very useful.
| | 03:45 | You can set up Twitter so that
when you post something on Twitter,
| | 03:49 | it automatically gets sent to the blog and post
it on the blog as well under a certain section.
| | 03:53 | It requires a bit more setup, but this
is where you activate it, and you can
| | 03:57 | pick which blog you want that to
happen on, if you have more than one.
| | 04:02 | Directly underneath it you can also say
whether or not you want the geolocation
| | 04:05 | data that's attached to your tweet to
also be published on your blog post.
| | 04:10 | Because inside WordPress.com you can
actually geolocate individual posts, so
| | 04:15 | that depending on where you are, people
will see your physical location when you
| | 04:18 | posted the new post.
| | 04:21 | The next option is a very important one, and
is one I recommend you always leave checked.
| | 04:26 | It is the Always use HTTPS when
visiting administration pages.
| | 04:30 | HTTPS is a secure encoding for your site.
| | 04:34 | If it's activated, it means that
people can't snoop on you while you're
| | 04:38 | interacting with the admin pages.
| | 04:40 | This is really important, if for example,
you're at a coffee shop with free Wi-Fi.
| | 04:45 | Because if you visit a site that
doesn't use HTTPS, other people who are on
| | 04:51 | the network, can see what you're
typing and can capture things like your
| | 04:54 | username and password.
| | 04:55 | However, if this is checked, and
you always use HTTPS when visiting
| | 05:00 | administration pages, people
can't snoop on what you're typing.
| | 05:04 | One more important thing though.
| | 05:05 | If you have this checked, you also have
to make sure you're actually using the
| | 05:09 | HTTPS link and you can
see that up in the URL here.
| | 05:13 | If you click on the URL, you would
see it says https:// at the beginning.
| | 05:19 | If it doesn't say that or if it has a
red strike through it, it means that you
| | 05:23 | are currently not on HTTPS
even though you think you are.
| | 05:26 | So leave this one checked at all times.
| | 05:28 | The next option is Interface Language.
| | 05:31 | It is literally the interface language.
| | 05:33 | So not the language you're writing in
when you're in WordPress, but rather the
| | 05:38 | language WordPress talks to you in.
| | 05:40 | So for instance, if you speak Norwegian
like I do you can change it to Norwegian
| | 05:44 | and then WordPress will appear in Norwegian.
| | 05:46 | I'll show you just so you can
see what I am talking about.
| | 05:48 | So I'll pick Norwegian and I'll
save it, and then you see here --
| | 05:57 | (Morten speaking Norwegian)
--it means Personal Settings, but it's in Norwegian.
| | 06:01 | So it's kind of neat because it
actually translates most of the WordPress
| | 06:05 | interface into whatever language you pick.
| | 06:08 | Change it back to English, so we can continue.
| | 06:15 | The language setting is especially
helpful if you're dealing with people who
| | 06:19 | don't speak English or another one of
the standard languages, like kids or
| | 06:23 | someone else, or if you just don't
like the English layout of WordPress.
| | 06:27 | Primary Blog has to do with
Primary Blog attached to your account.
| | 06:31 | So let's say you have multiple blogs,
and sites registered under the account
| | 06:34 | you are currently logged in as. You
probably have one that you use all the time
| | 06:38 | and that is your Primary Blog, so
this has to do with where you would
| | 06:42 | automatically go to if you said, I
want to make a new post without actually
| | 06:45 | logging in to that specific site.
| | 06:48 | The next option is a big one
and is actually really neat.
| | 06:51 | Under Proofreading you can get
WordPress to help you write better content.
| | 06:55 | At the top, you can set whether or not
WordPress automatically proofreads your
| | 06:59 | content, when you've published
a content or when it's updated.
| | 07:03 | I recommend checking both, so that when
you publish content, WordPress will go
| | 07:07 | through it and tell you if it's written
properly or if it's biased or anything.
| | 07:12 | And also if you choose to go in and
update the post later on, it will still go
| | 07:16 | through it, check it to make
sure that everything is up to par.
| | 07:19 | Now underneath here, you have all these
English Options and this is specific to
| | 07:24 | English language, but it allows
WordPress to check for other things rather than
| | 07:28 | just spelling errors. It will check
for things like Bias Language, use of
| | 07:32 | Cliches or Complex Phrases and so on.
| | 07:35 | This is really neat because it'll help you
see how you write things in different light.
| | 07:40 | So if you're using a lot of big words,
it will tell you you're using a lot of
| | 07:44 | big words, maybe not everyone
will understand what you're saying.
| | 07:47 | Or if you keep repeating
yourself it will tell you that too.
| | 07:50 | It's a neat function, it can get a
little annoying, if you're like me and you
| | 07:54 | make a lot of spelling errors or you
just don't care about how you write things.
| | 07:57 | But if you're really focused on
writing things properly and accurately and
| | 08:01 | everything and you want to improve your
writing, you should try to activate some
| | 08:05 | of these and just play around
with them and see what happens.
| | 08:08 | At the bottom here, you'll notice that
there are two more functions attached
| | 08:11 | to the Proofreading.
| | 08:12 | One is the Use automatically detected
language to proofread posts and pages.
| | 08:17 | It tries to figure out what language
you wrote the content in and then it
| | 08:20 | will proofread based on the content.
| | 08:22 | It's usually accurate but not always.
| | 08:25 | So if you write in multiple different
languages, you might want to click on that
| | 08:28 | box and see what happens.
| | 08:30 | At the bottom you could
also put in Ignored Phrases,
| | 08:33 | phrases that the proofreader won't
check for. That could be specific words that
| | 08:37 | you intentionally write incorrectly, it
could be names like Samoca or something
| | 08:42 | like that, that you don't want to
get flagged every time it pops up.
| | 08:46 | Finally, for the Posts section
you have this last one that's called
| | 08:50 | Additional Post Content.
| | 08:52 | It helps you find other content
published by other people online that somehow
| | 08:57 | relates to your content and its
powered by a service called as Zemanta.
| | 09:01 | I've tried it, I find it to be
interesting that it relates the things it does,
| | 09:06 | and sometimes it can be very useful.
| | 09:08 | But it's something I would use with a
bit of caution, because sometimes you end
| | 09:12 | up with things that aren't
really that well related.
| | 09:15 | But if you're looking for help,
writing better content and you really need to
| | 09:19 | find content elsewhere on the Internet,
activating this feature might help you
| | 09:23 | find content you weren't aware of beforehand.
| | 09:26 | At the very bottom of the Personal
Settings, you have Account Details.
| | 09:29 | The Account Details relate to your
account specifically, and show you the
| | 09:33 | Username, the E-mail that the Username
is attached to, the Website and it allows
| | 09:39 | you to change your Password.
| | 09:41 | And this is what's really most
important about the Account Details;
| | 09:44 | this is where you set your Password.
| | 09:46 | So if you need to change your Password,
you will login to WordPress, go to the
| | 09:50 | Dashboard, go to Personal Settings and
then go all the way to the bottom under
| | 09:55 | Account Details and reset it.
| | 09:57 | When you're done with all your changes,
click Save Changes, WordPress jumps you
| | 10:02 | back up to the top and shows User updated.
| | 10:05 | The last feature on the Personal
Settings page is the My Location setting.
| | 10:09 | It allows you to Enable Geotagging for the page.
| | 10:13 | So what happens is you can actually give
each post and yourself a geolocation on
| | 10:19 | a map to tell the visitors where
the post is written and where you are.
| | 10:23 | The easiest way of setting a
geolocation is to click the Auto Detect button.
| | 10:27 | When you do that, your browser will ask
you if you should the Allow the website
| | 10:31 | to find your location.
| | 10:33 | So I'll click Allow.
| | 10:34 | And it find in pretty accurate terms
where I am, because I'm in Ventura right
| | 10:39 | now so you see it brings in Ventura for me.
| | 10:41 | However, it's not always that accurate,
so sometimes you have to literally zoom
| | 10:46 | out, look at the map and figure out
where you are yourself and then just place
| | 10:50 | the cursor wherever you think you are.
| | 10:52 | When you activate this feature, you
also enable the feature inside each post so
| | 10:56 | you can then geolocate each post.
| | 10:59 | It's something you may want to do if
you're like a travel blogger or something
| | 11:01 | like that or the geolocation of a post matters.
| | 11:05 | But if you have privacy concerns, I
would recommend not enabling geotagging.
| | 11:10 | All that's left to do then is Save Changes
and my Personal Settings are now up-to-date.
| | 11:17 | WordPress provides
customizability at every level.
| | 11:20 | That includes how the back end admin area works.
| | 11:23 | From the Personal Settings, you can
control how WordPress works and behaves, and
| | 11:27 | more importantly, you can get
WordPress to help you with both language and
| | 11:30 | further information.
| | 11:32 | Though often overlooked, Personal
Settings are powerful and well worth the two
| | 11:35 | minutes it takes to set them up properly.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting site settings and improving privacy and findability| 00:00 | The control center of a WordPress
site can be found under the Settings tab
| | 00:04 | on the left-hand side.
| | 00:05 | From here, you can control everything
from what the site is called and how it
| | 00:09 | shows up in search engines, to who can
view and comment on different posts, and
| | 00:13 | how the front page is displayed.
| | 00:16 | Although there are a lot of settings
in a WordPress site, they are pretty
| | 00:18 | straightforward and easy to understand, and
now we are going to go through a couple of them.
| | 00:23 | To get to the Settings we go to the bottom
of the left hand panel and select General.
| | 00:27 | This is the General Settings for the
site, and this is where things like the
| | 00:31 | Site Title, the Tagline the E-mail
Address associated with the site, the
| | 00:35 | Timezone and so on are stored.
| | 00:37 | By default, WordPress will assign the
name of the site that you assign to the
| | 00:41 | site as the site title, but it
doesn't get a Tagline until you put it in.
| | 00:46 | So unless you changed the Tagline it
will always be just another WordPress blog.
| | 00:50 | So I recommend you go into Settings>
General and change it to a Tagline that
| | 00:55 | matches what your site is going to be about.
| | 00:57 | In this case, it's going to be
News about what's happening at SAMOCA.
| | 01:01 | You should also change the Timezone so that
the Timezone corresponds to where you are.
| | 01:05 | The Timezone is important because you
can schedule posts to be released at a
| | 01:09 | certain time, but if the Timezone
is wrong it will look like it was
| | 01:12 | scheduled earlier or later.
| | 01:15 | Easiest way of setting the Timezone, if
you don't know your own Timezone, is to
| | 01:18 | simply type in the name of a city
close by, like for instance we are in
| | 01:21 | Ventura, California, so we're close to
Los Angeles, so if I spell Los Angeles, I
| | 01:27 | get that as an option.
| | 01:29 | You can also set the Date Format and
Time Format and even the day the week
| | 01:32 | starts on from Monday to Sunday
or whatever, and the language.
| | 01:37 | Now when I say Language, I don't
mean the language of the website, you're
| | 01:40 | looking at right now, I mean the
language you're going to be writing in.
| | 01:43 | So if you are writing in
English, leave it at English.
| | 01:46 | If you're going to write posts in
French then change it to French.
| | 01:49 | This is important because the browsers,
when they visit the site, they want to
| | 01:52 | know what language the content is written in.
| | 01:54 | Not just the browser, the search
engines and Facebook and all these other
| | 01:57 | services, they all want to
know what the language is.
| | 02:00 | And if the language code is wrong, then
you'll get indexed wrong and the browsers
| | 02:04 | will be informed about the wrong language.
| | 02:06 | So set it to the language you're going
to be writing in, not the language the
| | 02:10 | user interface is going to be in.
| | 02:12 | When I made changes, I have to click
Save Changes so that the changes are saved,
| | 02:17 | and then I'll also go and
add a Blog Picture/Icon.
| | 02:20 | This matters on WordPress.com because
every now and again WordPress wants to put
| | 02:25 | your site in an index or link to it
or use a little avatar to point to the
| | 02:30 | site and that's what this picture is.
| | 02:32 | So upload a picture that
you think is going to work.
| | 02:35 | I am going to choose the
Square one and click Upload Image.
| | 02:41 | When you do you get taken to a
cropper that helps you crop the image to the
| | 02:44 | correct size, after you crop it, you
click Crop Image, you get to see the
| | 02:49 | preview of the images and then you
can go back to the Blog Options again.
| | 02:53 | Under General, you have Writing.
| | 02:55 | Writing is about the actual writing
process in WordPress, and there are not
| | 02:59 | that many options here.
| | 03:00 | The ones that matter are
the size of the post box.
| | 03:03 | Now this is a common question, how do you
change the default size of the post box?
| | 03:07 | It's done here.
| | 03:08 | If you don't know what I am
talking about, I'll show you.
| | 03:10 | If I go to Posts and I create a new post,
directly under Title, we have this big
| | 03:15 | box here where we are going to write
all our content, that's the post box, and
| | 03:20 | by default, it is set to 20 lines of text,
which means if I write here, I'll end
| | 03:25 | up with 20 lines of text.
| | 03:27 | I can change this size by grabbing it
down here, but I want to have it at a
| | 03:31 | default size that makes sense.
| | 03:33 | So if the 20 lines are too small, I
can go here under Writing Settings and
| | 03:37 | change that to something else.
| | 03:40 | You can also change the Formatting,
so it changes the emoticons to actual
| | 03:44 | graphics and fixes broken HTML and
you can set the Default Post Category to
| | 03:50 | something other than
Uncategorized if you want to.
| | 03:53 | Below it, you have Press This, which
allows you to add a bookmarklet to your
| | 03:57 | browser, so that when you find
something interesting, you just click on that
| | 04:00 | bookmarklet and you automatically get
brought to WordPress so that you can
| | 04:03 | write a post about it.
| | 04:05 | And at the bottom you have Post by
E-mail which allows you to e-mail your site,
| | 04:09 | and then whatever you e-mail to the
site automatically gets published.
| | 04:12 | Below Writing we have Reading.
| | 04:14 | Reading is about how people
see the site when they visit it.
| | 04:17 | At the top, you have the ability to
change what the FrontPage displays.
| | 04:21 | By default, it will display a standard
blog which is a reverse chronological
| | 04:25 | order of your most recent posts.
| | 04:27 | However, in some cases you want the
front page to be a static page with static
| | 04:32 | content and then you want some
other page to be the blog page.
| | 04:36 | If that's the case, you make two new
pages, one that's actually the front page
| | 04:40 | that has your front page content on it
and another one that is an empty page
| | 04:44 | that just serves as a placeholder for the blog.
| | 04:47 | Once you've done that you can go to
Front page displays, change it to A static
| | 04:51 | page and then select a page for the
Front Page and a page for the Post page.
| | 04:56 | If you don't select a page for the
Post page, there will be no Blog page
| | 05:01 | available on your site.
| | 05:02 | That may be what you want or it may
not be what you want, so you have to make
| | 05:05 | that decision on your own.
| | 05:07 | Below that, you decide how many posts
are going to be displayed on the Post page
| | 05:11 | and in your feed, whether or not your
feed will display the Full text or just a
| | 05:15 | Summary of your content and whether or
not, your feed should contain Categories,
| | 05:20 | Tags and Comment count.
| | 05:22 | Below that, you have settings
for people who follow your site.
| | 05:25 | So if they subscribe either to your
site as a whole or if they subscribe to a
| | 05:29 | thread of comments, so they really want
to participate in a discussion but they
| | 05:33 | don't want to sit on the site,
they can get it by e-mail.
| | 05:36 | This is all set here, where you also
write the welcome text for people who
| | 05:40 | either follow your site as a
whole at the top or just a comment.
| | 05:43 | So you may want to look through this
text and make sure it matches what you
| | 05:46 | want, or you may want to customize
it so that it becomes more personal.
| | 05:52 | The next option on the list is Discussion.
| | 05:55 | This allows you to control the
commenting on your site, and this is
| | 05:58 | something that is quite important if you want
to have a vibrant community around your blog.
| | 06:03 | You need to allow people to comment on
your site but at the same time you want
| | 06:06 | to kind of moderate the
commenting, so it doesn't get too harsh.
| | 06:10 | And you may also want to control how
it's displayed, so you don't get too many
| | 06:13 | comments on one page. All that is done here.
| | 06:16 | A common question, I get a lot
is how do you turn commenting off?
| | 06:20 | Well, the easiest way of turning
commenting off is to go to the top on
| | 06:24 | Discussion Settings, under Default
article settings and un-checking number three
| | 06:28 | here, which says Allow people
to post comments on new articles.
| | 06:31 | If you uncheck it, then no one
can post comments on new articles.
| | 06:35 | Unless, in that article you
specifically said, that that article can have
| | 06:39 | comments, because each of these
three top settings can be overridden for
| | 06:43 | individual articles.
| | 06:44 | The rest of the Comment
section is pretty straightforward.
| | 06:47 | You have comment settings that allow
you to do things like demand that the
| | 06:51 | author must fill in a name and e-mail
if they are not logged in to
| | 06:54 | WordPress.com, you can say how many of
threaded levels you have in each comment
| | 06:59 | row, and how many comments are
displayed on each page and so on.
| | 07:02 | Underneath there, you have the E-mail
settings, which set how often you get
| | 07:07 | e-mails and what situations will
generate e-mails from your site to you telling
| | 07:12 | you about new comments, and you can do
things like, demand that an administrator
| | 07:16 | must always approve a new comment
every time it's posted or confirm that the
| | 07:21 | commenter has already had one
comment approved previously.
| | 07:24 | Below the E-mail settings you have
Comment Moderation and Comment Blacklist.
| | 07:29 | This is a great way of filtering out
garbage in comments, because comment
| | 07:32 | spam is the new spam.
| | 07:34 | So when you put a website on internet,
it will get tons of crap comments
| | 07:38 | that are basically just there to
either take over your site or to just
| | 07:41 | advertise something.
| | 07:43 | And it's easy to filter this out by
putting in things like specific words you
| | 07:47 | don't want to appear in comments,
specific URLs that can come from or IP
| | 07:51 | addresses or even e-mail addresses.
| | 07:52 | What's important here is the
distinction between Moderation and Blacklist.
| | 07:58 | If you put a word or an IP address or an
e-mail on the Moderation list, it means
| | 08:02 | every time a comment comes in
containing one of these, it will go into the
| | 08:06 | Moderation box, which means, you have
to actively approve the comment before it
| | 08:10 | displays on the site.
| | 08:11 | However, if you put that same
information in the Blacklist, the comment will
| | 08:16 | simply be deleted, it will never be published.
| | 08:18 | No matter what you do and you
don't have to do anything about it.
| | 08:21 | At the very bottom, you
have settings for Avatars.
| | 08:24 | Now you remember the Gravatars that we
created early in the course, well, this
| | 08:28 | is where they kick in.
| | 08:29 | When people comment on your site
you can choose to not show or show the
| | 08:33 | Gravatars attached to that user.
| | 08:35 | By default you show Gravatars and you
can even activate something called Hover
| | 08:39 | Gravatars which means when people hover
over a gravatar, you automatically get
| | 08:43 | this pop-up with more information
about that user and you can set things like
| | 08:48 | the maximum rating for Gravatar, so you
only display G-rated Gravatars and you
| | 08:52 | can pick what the default Gravatar should be.
| | 08:55 | I personally like the Mystery Man, so
I am going to activate the Mystery Man.
| | 08:59 | At the very bottom you have Comment Form.
| | 09:02 | This relates to a specific function
inside WordPress.com which allows you to
| | 09:05 | make a Comment Form.
| | 09:07 | And if you change that, Leave a Reply
to something else, it will change the
| | 09:10 | Comment Form button.
| | 09:12 | When you made your changes, click Save Changes.
| | 09:15 | The final item on the Settings
list, I want to focus on is Privacy.
| | 09:18 | If you click on Privacy, you see at
the top here, you have two options;
| | 09:23 | Allow search engines to index this site, or
Ask search engines not to index this site.
| | 09:29 | You'll remember from when you set up the
site originally that you had this option.
| | 09:33 | This basically allows you to tell
search engines whether or not you want to be
| | 09:36 | indexed or not, and it's
important for one particular reason.
| | 09:41 | If you're setting up and new site
and you're going to populate it but you
| | 09:45 | haven't done it yet or you're in the
process of populating a site, it might be a
| | 09:48 | good idea to turn search engine indexing off.
| | 09:52 | Simply because, as you are moving
forward, you may mess up the content or
| | 09:56 | publish content that is not going to
be there for all time or something like
| | 09:59 | that and you don't want that to be
indexed and then people follow the index
| | 10:02 | links and then they end up
somewhere where there is nothing.
| | 10:05 | But, once you're done with that and
you publish content you want other
| | 10:09 | people to find, you should always
set it to Allow search engines to index
| | 10:13 | this site, with one exception.
| | 10:15 | If you're publishing content that you
only want a specific group of people to
| | 10:19 | access, then you go down here and you
say, I would like my site to be private,
| | 10:22 | visible only to users I choose.
| | 10:25 | If you do that, you can create a list of
invited guests that can see your site and
| | 10:30 | for the rest of the world
your site will be invisible.
| | 10:33 | For our intents and purposes, you
should set Site Visibility to the top option,
| | 10:38 | Allow search engines to index this site,
because that way we can use all the
| | 10:41 | sharing features that are
included inside WordPress.com.
| | 10:45 | Looking at the Settings tab, you see
that there are several other options;
| | 10:48 | you have Polls & Ratings, Domains,
| | 10:50 | Email Post Changes and so on and so on.
| | 10:53 | And I encourage you to click on them
and look over what's there, and if you're
| | 10:56 | confused, click on the Help tab which is
related to the page you are looking at,
| | 11:01 | so you understand it.
| | 11:02 | But I've covered the most basic
options that are most important.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exploring advanced sharing options| 00:00 | Sharing content on social media is
something pretty much every Internet
| | 00:04 | user does these days. And people
are now just as likely to use social
| | 00:08 | networks to search for and find
content as they are to use a good
| | 00:12 | old-fashioned search engine.
| | 00:13 | To get your content out and noticed in
the world incorporating advanced sharing
| | 00:17 | functionality is a must.
| | 00:19 | By connecting and sharing the
content on your site, on your own social
| | 00:22 | networks, and allowing your visitors to
do the same, you dramatically increase
| | 00:27 | the chance of people landing on your
site and interacting with it, which is the
| | 00:30 | whole point, right?
| | 00:31 | So let's take a closer look at the
sharing options in WordPress.com.
| | 00:35 | You'll find the Sharing options under
the Dashboard, under Settings>Sharing.
| | 00:41 | Now there are three main sections here.
| | 00:43 | At the top, you have Publicize which
allows you to link Facebook, Twitter,
| | 00:48 | Yahoo!, MSN and LinkedIn directly with your
blog, and we'll talk about that a little bit.
| | 00:54 | Underneath you have Sharing buttons
which allow you to add sharing buttons
| | 00:58 | directly to your post so people can
share directly from your post and at the
| | 01:02 | bottom you have the WordPress.com
Like button which is very similar to the
| | 01:07 | Facebook Like button, so as people
like you on WordPress.com your stuff
| | 01:11 | becomes more popular.
| | 01:13 | Let's take a closer look
at Publicize, the top option.
| | 01:16 | What Publicize does is it links your
site permanently with your account on
| | 01:21 | one of these networks, so that when
you publish new content on your site, that
| | 01:26 | content automatically gets pushed out to those
networks without you having to lift a finger.
| | 01:31 | To make this work you first have to
link this WordPress.com site with your
| | 01:36 | social network account.
| | 01:37 | So what I've done here to demonstrate it
is, I went and logged into Facebook and
| | 01:41 | Twitter so that I can now link the site
to my Facebook account and my Twitter account.
| | 01:46 | Once I'm logged into those two sites I
can now click on Connect to Facebook and
| | 01:52 | WordPress will ask do I want to
authorize connection with Facebook so that these
| | 01:57 | two sites can interact?
| | 01:58 | I'll click on that and then
Facebook will ask me do you really want
| | 02:03 | WordPress.com to be able to
publish content on Facebook?
| | 02:07 | And I'll say Allow, and click Allow again.
| | 02:12 | And now we can see Facebook is connected.
| | 02:14 | From here I can disconnect and I can
also set some options if I want to, but I'll
| | 02:19 | leave it like this for now.
| | 02:20 | You can experiment with this yourself.
| | 02:22 | The same thing goes for Twitter.
| | 02:23 | I can connect to Twitter, and now you
can see both Facebook and Twitter are
| | 02:28 | connected to my site.
| | 02:29 | Now when I go to Posts>Add New, and I
create a new post, it'll automatically get
| | 02:36 | publicized to Facebook or Twitter.
| | 02:38 | However, I still need to do one more
thing. As you can see here in the Publish
| | 02:42 | panel, I need to authorize the
connection with the Facebook, so I'll click on
| | 02:46 | that link and then a process happens
behind the scenes, and then I have to go in
| | 02:53 | and assign what page or profile I want
to link the site to, because I manage a
| | 02:58 | lot of Facebook pages so I
just have to pick which one.
| | 03:01 | So I'll authorize it for myself,
scroll down and save the settings.
| | 03:05 | And then, when I go back to New Posts,
everything is working and you can see
| | 03:11 | here it says Publicize Twitter and
Facebook which means, when I hit the Publish
| | 03:16 | button not only does my new post
get published on my site, it also gets
| | 03:21 | published on Twitter and Facebook.
| | 03:22 | Now, that's how to set it up.
| | 03:24 | I'm also going to show you how to
unlink these things because you may want to
| | 03:27 | unlink them at some point.
| | 03:29 | To do that, you have to go back to
Settings and first disconnect from Facebook
| | 03:34 | and Twitter, you do that by clicking
Disconnect from Facebook and Disconnect
| | 03:38 | from Twitter, and you get disconnected.
| | 03:41 | Now you have to break those connections
in Facebook and Twitter itself so I'll
| | 03:45 | go to Facebook first, and I'll go to
my Settings under Account Settings, and
| | 03:52 | I'll click Apps. And here at the very
top, you'll see App settings, WordPress
| | 03:57 | was activated less than 24 hours ago,
and here I can go into Edit and Remove the
| | 04:01 | app, and now Facebook and the site have
been completely disconnected and cannot
| | 04:06 | talk to each other anymore.
| | 04:08 | By sharing your own content on social
networks, and allowing your visitors to do
| | 04:11 | the same, you dramatically increase the
chance of people finding and interacting
| | 04:15 | with what you've posted and by
activating Publicize you do this automatically.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding sharing buttons to posts and pages| 00:00 | The new social Web is based around
the ability to easily share interesting
| | 00:04 | articles and other content with
your friends across multiple platforms.
| | 00:08 | To make it as easy as possible for
your readers to share your stories with
| | 00:12 | the world, WordPress.com offers the
ability to add simple Share buttons to
| | 00:17 | your posts and pages.
| | 00:18 | Adding these sharing buttons is done in
the Dashboard under Settings and Sharing.
| | 00:24 | Directly under Publicize, you have the
Sharing Buttons and this is where you can
| | 00:28 | figure what sharing buttons you're
going to use and how they appear.
| | 00:32 | By default you have Press This,
Twitter and Facebook, but you can change this
| | 00:38 | into any other configuration you want.
| | 00:40 | This window consists of four areas, you
have all the Available Services at the
| | 00:44 | top then you have the Enabled Services
and within the Enabled Services you have
| | 00:49 | a box that allows you to make a drop-down
list of services you don't want to
| | 00:54 | display prominently and then at the
bottom you have a Live Preview that will
| | 00:57 | show what these buttons are going to look like.
| | 00:59 | So, let say we want to add a Pinterest
button and a Google+ button to our lists
| | 01:07 | and then reorganize this order.
| | 01:09 | So I want Twitter first, and then
Facebook, and then Google+, and then Pinterest,
| | 01:16 | and then I don't want Press This anymore.
| | 01:18 | Now I have these four buttons, and you
can see them down here: Twitter, Facebook,
| | 01:22 | G+ and Pinterest. And then I want to
add Email and Print into this More button
| | 01:27 | on the site, then I'll add Press This
there as well. And you can see the More
| | 01:33 | button appears on the side here and when I
hover over it you see Email, Prints and Press This.
| | 01:38 | So, now we know roughly how these
buttons look, but as you know some of these
| | 01:42 | buttons can be interactive. You can
already see it with a G+ button, it shows
| | 01:47 | how many people have actually +1ed
this article, but you can do the same
| | 01:51 | with Twitter and Facebook as well.
| | 01:53 | To change these buttons you have to go in
here, on to the Button style and instead
| | 01:57 | of having Icon+text go click Official
buttons and then get the official buttons
| | 02:03 | from these services.
| | 02:04 | As you can see we now have the Tweet
button with the counter. We have the
| | 02:07 | interactive Like button which changes
depending on whether or not you're logged
| | 02:11 | in and how many other people have liked
them and bunch of other factors it even
| | 02:14 | translates into other languages. And you
have the Pin it button, which is very new,
| | 02:18 | that does the same thing as the
Tweet and Like button, they count.
| | 02:23 | After the Button style, you
can change the Sharing label.
| | 02:26 | As you can see the default says Share
this, but you can change to something else.
| | 02:31 | Share the love, or to the link love, or
something like that. Or you can put in
| | 02:36 | nothing and then you just
won't have a heading on it.
| | 02:39 | Below that you have the option of
deciding where links are going to opened.
| | 02:43 | This doesn't really happen with
Tweets, Likes and G+, but it happens with
| | 02:47 | the other services.
| | 02:49 | I suggest you set it to New window, so
that you open a separate window for the
| | 02:53 | sharing and then when you close that
window you end up back on the site. And
| | 02:56 | finally, you can decide where
you want to show the buttons.
| | 03:00 | By default they're showed on Posts and
Pages, but you can also activate it for
| | 03:05 | the front page if you want to.
| | 03:06 | The Media page is less important. I
generally like to have my sharing buttons
| | 03:11 | only on Posts and Pages, or in many
cases only on Posts. I don't like them on
| | 03:15 | the archive pages, because you see them
repeated so often it doesn't look very nice.
| | 03:19 | And of course at the very, very bottom
you have the WordPress.com Like button,
| | 03:23 | which is a separate entity.
| | 03:25 | Once I've made all these changes--I have
a button row I like, I've configured it
| | 03:29 | in the way I wanted to--I'll Save
Changes. And then I'll right-click on SAMOCA
| | 03:34 | here to open the sites and you'll see
on the front page there are no sharing
| | 03:39 | buttons. But when I go to a single
post, the sharing buttons appear here.
| | 03:44 | Now you notice something important.
This looks wierd, to put it lightly.
| | 03:49 | That's because these buttons the
official ones are actually little holes that
| | 03:53 | have been cut into my site that show
buttons that live elsewhere. And because
| | 03:57 | these buttons change shape and size
all the time, the size of the button is
| | 04:01 | assumed to be much bigger than it needs
to be, because there has to be room for
| | 04:05 | all that other content.
| | 04:06 | So it doesn't look very nice, and in
many cases you want a little bit more
| | 04:10 | stylistic control, in which case you can
go back to Sharing settings, change the
| | 04:15 | Button style to Icon only, for example, or
Icon+text, save the changes reload your
| | 04:22 | page and you'll see a much nicer layout.
| | 04:25 | Enabling your readers to easily share
your posts with their friends through social
| | 04:29 | networks and even e-mail is a great
way to add usability to your site and get
| | 04:34 | new readers at the same time.
| | 04:36 | The built-in sharing feature in
WordPress makes it easy to add the most common
| | 04:40 | social networks including Twitter,
Facebook, and Pinterest as buttons on your
| | 04:45 | site, so people have an easy time
sharing your content with their friends on
| | 04:50 | their social networks.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Creating PostsUnderstanding the difference between posts and pages| 00:00 | WordPress has two main types
of content, Posts and Pages.
| | 00:05 | Understanding the similarities and
differences between them is important to
| | 00:08 | create a well organized site.
| | 00:10 | To see how Posts and Pages work, let's
take a look at this website, it's called
| | 00:13 | Frugalbits.com and it's one we
built a company in Vancouver.
| | 00:18 | It's basically a magazine that talks
about how to, as they call it, Spend Smart.
| | 00:22 | This is a magazine-style blog which
means they post contents, like a blog does,
| | 00:27 | but they only post one article a day.
| | 00:30 | And that brings us to the first point.
| | 00:32 | Posts are organized based on certain
parameters, and those parameters are Dates,
| | 00:37 | Author, Category and Tag.
| | 00:40 | The way this works is if you look at a
standard WordPress site what you will
| | 00:44 | see is always on the front page the
most recent article, because the articles
| | 00:48 | are organized by date.
| | 00:49 | So, you always see a reverse
chronological order, with the most recent content
| | 00:54 | of top and then as you scroll
down you see older and older content.
| | 00:58 | This is a staple of all blogs, and
it's one of the core features inside
| | 01:02 | WordPress, the ability to
organize content based on date.
| | 01:06 | As you can see on the front page here,
we have one main story here and then the
| | 01:11 | eight next stories featured on top here.
| | 01:13 | So we can see the first four, click
on them, and you see the next four.
| | 01:18 | Each of these stories is organized
not only based on the date, but if we go
| | 01:22 | into them, you can see that it's also
organized based on a category, in this
| | 01:26 | case Goods & Services.
| | 01:27 | A Category is a bucket, so any post has
to go in to at least one bucket, but the
| | 01:33 | posts can actually belong to
multiple different buckets.
| | 01:35 | So for instance, if you have
something that was both Goods & Services and
| | 01:39 | Fitness & Health you would put them
in both categories and both will be
| | 01:42 | featured at the top here.
| | 01:44 | I can click on Goods & Services and
then I go to the Index that shows all the
| | 01:48 | stories that are under the
Goods & Services category.
| | 01:51 | So I am basically looking into
the bucket of Goods & Services.
| | 01:54 | I can then go to a different story and
I see that the date is different, and the
| | 01:59 | author may be different too, but if I
scroll all the way to the bottom you will
| | 02:03 | see we also have tags.
| | 02:04 | Now tags are kind of like
categories, but then not like categories.
| | 02:09 | The best way to think about the
difference between Categories and Tags is to
| | 02:12 | think about art gallery.
| | 02:14 | At the art gallery they might have
photography, mixed art, paintings and sculpture.
| | 02:21 | Each of these four photography, mixed art,
painting and sculpture would be a category.
| | 02:25 | So an item must belong to one of them,
otherwise it wouldn't be featured in the gallery.
| | 02:30 | But an item can also belong to several.
For example, you could have a mixed
| | 02:34 | media art piece that has
photography and painting in it.
| | 02:39 | In that case, it would
have all three categories.
| | 02:41 | Whereas, a photo that's just the photo,
would only belong under the photo category.
| | 02:45 | Tags on the other hand are kind of
loose references that tie them together.
| | 02:50 | So one tag might be a color, say red,
because multiple items have red in them.
| | 02:56 | But it could be an item from either
four of the categories, or a tag could to
| | 03:00 | be the name of a model that's in
several of the art pieces, or it could be the
| | 03:05 | technique used to create something, or the
lighting, or the location, and a bunch of other things.
| | 03:10 | So other items that you might want to
organize based on, but that are not really
| | 03:14 | main categories would be considered tags.
| | 03:17 | To see how the Author function works,
if you click on one of these Columns here
| | 03:22 | you will see all the
posts by one particular author.
| | 03:24 | And when you go into that post you
will see information about that author and
| | 03:29 | here you even have a Gravatar Hovercard.
| | 03:32 | This is just a different way of
organizing it, which means this post also lives
| | 03:36 | under the DIY category, but it's now organized
based on the author, rather than the category.
| | 03:42 | This is great if you have a multi-author blog.
| | 03:45 | Finally, posts also have
something called featured images.
| | 03:49 | You can see the featured images here at the top;
| | 03:51 | these four images here are all featured images.
| | 03:54 | They are images that are attached to
the post, not in the post itself, but
| | 03:58 | rather referenced by the post, so that
we can display them either on the front page.
| | 04:02 | Or we can go to category list, and then
you see the images featured here on the side.
| | 04:08 | The featured images are great,
because you can use them in index pages and
| | 04:12 | display content without actually
having to go into the whole post.
| | 04:15 | As you can see, overseeing is the featured
image, the title, and a short description.
| | 04:20 | Whereas, when we go in, we see a much
larger version of image and the full story.
| | 04:26 | An extra feature in posts is that you
can attach breakpoints in the posts.
| | 04:31 | A breakpoint will appear in an index page and
you can see it right here on the front page.
| | 04:36 | When we scroll down and read the story,
it only goes a little way down the page
| | 04:40 | before we get this link that says
Continue Reading, that's the breakpoint.
| | 04:43 | When we click on the Continue
Reading link, we would jump directly to the
| | 04:47 | second half of the story.
| | 04:48 | So you see this is where it broke
and here is the rest of the story.
| | 04:52 | That means you can feature part of the
story on the front page and then the rest
| | 04:56 | comes after the jump, as they call it.
| | 04:59 | So what about Pages?
| | 05:00 | Well, pages are quite different from posts.
First of all, whereas posts are
| | 05:05 | content that constantly updates and
you always post new stuff, pages tend to
| | 05:09 | be static content that you create once
and leave of the site easily accessible
| | 05:13 | for a long period of time. It rarely changes
and it really needs to be in one tied up location.
| | 05:19 | One example is the link up here at
the very top of the menu that says this
| | 05:22 | What is Frugalbits?
| | 05:23 | It's kind of the About page of the site
and when we go to it, we get the static
| | 05:28 | page, no category, no dates, no tags
and no author, this is just information
| | 05:34 | about the site itself.
| | 05:35 | If we scroll down to the bottom, you
will see there are more pages. We also have
| | 05:40 | Legal pages and you will notice that
the legal pages look completely different
| | 05:44 | because pages can have page templates.
So a page template can be assigned to any
| | 05:49 | page and it will change the
layout of the page completely.
| | 05:52 | To get a different view of pages you
can go to the 12X12 Vancouver Photo
| | 05:57 | Marathon website and look at that.
| | 05:59 | Here we have far more pages than we
have on the Frugalbit site and most of
| | 06:02 | them are in the menu.
| | 06:04 | So the general rule of thumb is if you
have a single bulk of content, so one
| | 06:09 | story you want to publish, but you
think that it belongs in the main menu, then
| | 06:14 | it's probably going to be a page,
because pages are static content that should
| | 06:18 | be in the main menu so they are easily
accessible, whereas, posts are more stuff
| | 06:21 | that comes into the stream and is
there for a while and then goes away.
| | 06:24 | So here you see, we have an About
page and since this is a contest, we also
| | 06:29 | have sub-pages or child pages about
The Team, The Judges and Other Media
| | 06:34 | content and we have a regular Contact page that
gives you contact information about the event.
| | 06:39 | To sum it up, posts are like articles;
you publish an article, it's current for
| | 06:44 | a time, and then it becomes less
important, and it falls down the chain, but
| | 06:47 | people can still find it later and
they can also find it when they're looking
| | 06:50 | for other related content.
| | 06:52 | Pages on the other hand are more like
static content that you want to put up
| | 06:56 | because you want to give people
information about things like how to get in
| | 06:59 | touch with you, or about the
publication as a whole, or other kinds of
| | 07:04 | information that aren't necessarily
about the content itself, but rather about
| | 07:09 | how it's displayed or who is displaying it.
| | 07:11 | Think a Bio for an author, a Contact
page or an About page for the entire website.
| | 07:17 | Using Pages and Posts the right way in
WordPress will help you create a site
| | 07:21 | that is easy to navigate and content
that is easily accessible to your visitors.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a new post| 00:00 | In a WordPress site, the post is the
most important item and it's also where
| | 00:04 | you'll spend most of your time.
| | 00:05 | Whenever you publish something new,
you'll be publishing a new post, and that's
| | 00:09 | also probably where you'll
have the most interaction.
| | 00:12 | People will share your posts, they'll comment
on your posts, you'll answer their comments.
| | 00:16 | So creating a new post should be as easy
as possible, and WordPress.com has gone
| | 00:21 | a really long way in making the post
creation process as easy as possible.
| | 00:26 | If you're logged into WordPress.com,
and you're on the front page, you can
| | 00:29 | create a post in several
different ways right from the front page.
| | 00:33 | First, there's this New Post tab
right here under the WordPress.com logo.
| | 00:38 | If you click on it, you go directly
to post editor where you can type in a
| | 00:42 | Title, you can write Content and
you can even activate things like the
| | 00:47 | Kitchen Sink, so you can see all of
your tools available here just like you
| | 00:50 | would in your Dashboard.
| | 00:51 | You can insert a Photo, you
can add Tags, set up Post type.
| | 00:55 | You can even add things like photos or videos.
| | 00:59 | Once you're done writing your post, you
can then click Publish Post and the post
| | 01:02 | is published directly to your site.
| | 01:04 | That's all well and good, but it
actually gets cooler than this.
| | 01:07 | If I go to Freshly Pressed and visit
someone else's site, and while I'm reading
| | 01:12 | this site, all of a sudden I realized, I too
have to write an article about Eggs on Hash.
| | 01:18 | Instead of having to go to my own blog,
I can now simply click the New Post
| | 01:22 | button on the WordPress toolbar, and
I get a post editor right here in the
| | 01:27 | top of the window, where I can again
write a Title, Content, insert a Photo
| | 01:32 | and publish a post.
| | 01:33 | If I want to navigate away from this
post while I'm doing it, because I want to
| | 01:37 | find some additional information, I can
click the Pop-out button right here in
| | 01:41 | the lower left corner and the editor
pops out and becomes a stand-alone unit.
| | 01:47 | So now I can go in here and navigate
somewhere else, and then I still have my
| | 01:52 | editor here and I can still write my post.
| | 01:55 | That's all well and good, but if you're
going to be serious about writing posts,
| | 01:58 | I recommend you should try to use
the Full Post editor in the Dashboard.
| | 02:02 | So I'll just go to our Profile, find
the blog you want to publish to, and then
| | 02:07 | instead of going to Dashboard,
just go straight to New Post.
| | 02:11 | If you were already in your Dashboard,
you can also go to Posts and then, Add New.
| | 02:16 | From here, we can now create a new
post with all the features of WordPress.
| | 02:20 | Now I'm going to write a post based on
the content I have in my Assets, but
| | 02:24 | you should really write about something you
care about and what your blog is going to be about.
| | 02:28 | So I'll go down to Microsoft Word here
and get the title of the post I want to
| | 02:32 | write and paste it in, and do some
cleanup, and then I want my content.
| | 02:39 | Now since this is a Microsoft Word
document, Word will attach a bunch of extra
| | 02:43 | code to it that I don't want.
| | 02:45 | To paste it in properly, without all
the extra code and stuff I don't want, I'm
| | 02:50 | going to activate the Kitchen Sink over here.
| | 02:52 | We'll talk about this in more detail later.
| | 02:54 | But when I activate the Kitchen Sink, I
get some extra functions including this
| | 02:58 | one that says Paste as Plain Text.
| | 03:01 | When I open that, I get a new view
where I can paste in text, it'll then be
| | 03:05 | stripped of all the styling and
will display it just as plain text.
| | 03:09 | So I'll go back to Word, grab the text
I want, and paste that in here, then I
| | 03:16 | can do some light editing and I'll
take away the space and click Insert.
| | 03:21 | So now you see that text appears
inside my post editor as it should.
| | 03:25 | Now that have the content I want in my
post, I'm going to save this as a Draft.
| | 03:30 | So I'll go to the Publish
Panel and I'll click Save Draft.
| | 03:34 | As I'm working, WordPress will
actually save my posts as drafts automatically,
| | 03:39 | but even so I like to click the Save
Draft button when I'm done with writing
| | 03:43 | what I want to write, before I want
to publish it, just in case something
| | 03:47 | happens and just so that I know
positively that it has been saved.
| | 03:52 | As you can see up here, it says
Post draft updated: Preview post.
| | 03:55 | So now I can preview the post and I see that
all the information is here, and I can move on.
| | 04:02 | Now before we go any further, I'd
like to remind you of something.
| | 04:06 | Early in this course, I talked
about the Screen Options and I talked
| | 04:09 | about Movable Panels.
| | 04:11 | So let's revisit that.
| | 04:12 | Inside the Post View, we have a long
list of panels, including the Publish
| | 04:16 | panel, the Categories, Tags,
Location and other things.
| | 04:21 | I can now grab any of these panels and
move them around or I can even collapse
| | 04:26 | or turn them on or off completely.
| | 04:27 | For example, if I want the Likes and
Shares options to be higher up than the
| | 04:31 | Writing Helper, I simply grab it,
and pull it up and place it.
| | 04:36 | If I want to get rid of Likes and
Shares altogether, I scroll to the top, click
| | 04:40 | Screen Options, find Likes
and Shares, and deactivate it.
| | 04:45 | I can also turn on Discussion, so that
I can decide whether I want people to be
| | 04:48 | able to comment on this post and also
whether or not the post should receive
| | 04:53 | trackbacks and pingbacks.
| | 04:55 | Finally, as I showed you previously,
the edit window is scalable, so you can
| | 04:59 | grab it and change the size of it,
and you can also switch between Visual
| | 05:03 | View and HTML View.
| | 05:05 | Now this doesn't really make much
difference right now, because we don't have
| | 05:08 | any styling in this text, but as you
work with styling and you start inserting
| | 05:12 | images and other elements, you'll see
that the HTML View becomes more valuable.
| | 05:16 | An important little note; it's easier
to resize the editor window in Visual
| | 05:21 | View, because right down here, you have
this arrow that pops up when you hover
| | 05:25 | over the corner, and you can easily resize it.
| | 05:28 | In HTML View, you have the tabs, but
you don't actually get an arrow that shows
| | 05:32 | you that you can resize it.
| | 05:33 | You can still do it.
| | 05:34 | You can grab it and resize it, but it's
not as obvious as it is inside Visual View.
| | 05:40 | Knowing how to quickly start a new
post for your site is going to save you a
| | 05:43 | lot of time and effort.
| | 05:45 | One of the key components of running
a successful website these days is to
| | 05:48 | keep it fresh and current and WordPress.com
makes every effort to make that happen for you.
| | 05:54 | Add to that you can even customize your post
interface to personalize it just for your use.
| | 05:59 | It all adds up to you being able
to produce and publish great Web
| | 06:02 | content faster.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Advanced text formatting in a new post| 00:00 | To make your text content as
legible and approachable as possible, it's
| | 00:04 | important to lay it out properly.
| | 00:06 | That means applying proper
text formatting to your content.
| | 00:10 | To make as this as easy as possible,
WordPress comes with a ton of tools built
| | 00:14 | in precisely for this purpose.
| | 00:16 | In fact, working with text in WordPress
is not that dissimilar from working with
| | 00:20 | text in a Word Processing
application like Microsoft Word.
| | 00:23 | That said, in my opinion all text
formatting should be done within WordPress.
| | 00:29 | The community is kind of split on this.
| | 00:31 | On one side you have people that swear
by doing everything inside WordPress and
| | 00:35 | on the other side you have people who
swear by writing older content outside of
| | 00:39 | WordPress and then only
importing it when they're done.
| | 00:42 | I don't know quite where I fall in that
debate, because I usually write all my
| | 00:45 | content within WordPress, but that's
because I'm lazy and I don't want to open
| | 00:49 | another application and then use it.
| | 00:51 | And there are some benefits to
writing your content in another application.
| | 00:55 | However, when it comes to
formatting the content, I always do it within
| | 00:59 | WordPress, because I need to make
sure that everything is consistent with
| | 01:03 | what WordPress wants.
| | 01:05 | And I'll show you how to do that right now.
| | 01:06 | We already created a draft, so now I
can open that draft either by going to
| | 01:11 | Recent Drafts here on the Dashboard
and clicking on it or going to Posts and
| | 01:16 | view All posts and here you
see my Upcoming Exhibit Draft.
| | 01:20 | So I will open that, now we
can take a look at our tools.
| | 01:23 | Inside the Editor we have a set of
standard tools that you'll see in most
| | 01:27 | text editors, we have Bold, Italicized and
Strikethrough and different kinds of lists.
| | 01:32 | So if I highlight some content here,
I'll highlight first exhibit and make it
| | 01:35 | bold and then I can highlight The
Atlantic and make it italicized.
| | 01:41 | And I can also pick a word here
and use a Strikethrough function.
| | 01:44 | The strikethrough function is really
popular with bloggers when they want to say
| | 01:47 | something sarcastic and then they
write the bad word first and then they
| | 01:51 | strikethrough it and then they
write the good word afterwards.
| | 01:53 | It can be quite funny.
| | 01:55 | Next to that you have the List items;
| | 01:58 | we can create Standard list items
just like we would in a Word Processing
| | 02:02 | Application so we will create an
Unordered list that would be the Bullet list.
| | 02:10 | And it works just like in any
Word Processing Application.
| | 02:13 | To get out of the list you simply
create a new item and then you click on the
| | 02:17 | button again and you go
back to the regular paragraph.
| | 02:20 | And then I can make an Ordered list and
then I'll click the Ordered list button.
| | 02:30 | And again, to get out of it I
just make a new line and click it.
| | 02:34 | Now on the Web, in addition to having
paragraphs, you also have something called
| | 02:38 | a Block Quote, and a Block Quote is
designed to pull quotes out of the regular
| | 02:43 | stream of the content to highlight them.
| | 02:46 | To show you how that works, I am going
to grab one of the quotes in here and I
| | 02:50 | will put it on its own paragraph and
then I will click anywhere inside it and
| | 02:54 | click this Quotation mark button.
| | 02:57 | This pulls the content to the side, so
it's literally indented from the rest of
| | 03:01 | the content. And depending on the theme
you're using, the Block Quote will now be
| | 03:05 | displayed in a different way from the
rest of the content, illustrating to the
| | 03:08 | reader that this really is
something separate and that it's a quote.
| | 03:13 | Now don't use to Block Quote
for any quote in your text.
| | 03:16 | It should really be longer
quotes that need to be separated.
| | 03:18 | For a regular two word quote inside
a sentence you just leave it alone.
| | 03:23 | Next to the Block Quote you
have the Alignment buttons.
| | 03:26 | My advice to you is never ever use them;
| | 03:30 | that's because most themes don't really
support this function, so if you use the
| | 03:34 | Alignment buttons you will actually
mess up your layout quite badly.
| | 03:37 | The only one I've seen used properly
is the Center Align button, but to be
| | 03:42 | honest with you, very few things need
to be center aligned, and it doesn't
| | 03:46 | really always look that good.
| | 03:47 | We will skip over the Link buttons
for now and go straight to the More tag.
| | 03:52 | Now if you remember the Frugalbits
example, on the front page you have a story
| | 03:55 | that kind of terminates in the middle
of the story and it has this Continue
| | 03:58 | Reading button at the very bottom
that takes you to the rest of the story.
| | 04:02 | That's this More tag button.
| | 04:05 | So, if you want to create a break,
let's say I want to create a break directly
| | 04:08 | after the first list, I'll go and make a new
line and I'll click on this Insert More tag.
| | 04:14 | Now you see WordPress
added a line that says More.
| | 04:17 | And this indicates that only what's
above this line will display on the front
| | 04:21 | page and in Index pages and the rest
of the content will only display in the
| | 04:26 | full page of this particular post.
| | 04:28 | Next, at the More tag, you have the
Proofread option which allows you to
| | 04:32 | proofread your content and then next
to that you have something really cool.
| | 04:36 | It says Toggle fullscreen mode
and that is truly what it does.
| | 04:40 | You click on it, and you go to this
distraction-free writing environment, where
| | 04:46 | all you see is a text you're writing.
| | 04:48 | This is great if you're writing longer
content and you don't be distracted by
| | 04:52 | all these other panels and
everything that's around.
| | 04:55 | And you still have some formatting
capabilities in here. If you put your
| | 04:58 | mouse up to the top, you see that we
still have some basic editing tools and
| | 05:02 | you can switch between HTML view and
Visual view, and you can add links and
| | 05:06 | images and stuff like that.
| | 05:07 | But it's fairly basic,
because this is all about writing.
| | 05:10 | So if you are an author or you want to
write great content, you might want to
| | 05:14 | click on this button just to make it
as easy as possible to write. You could
| | 05:18 | even hit F11 or Fullscreen in your
browser and then all you see is your content.
| | 05:23 | And then once you are done, you go
back to your browser, hover over it, click
| | 05:28 | Exit Fullscreen, and you gp
back to your regular view.
| | 05:32 | At the end of the first line you have
this button that says Show/Hide Kitchen Sink.
| | 05:36 | The Kitchen Sink are extra tools that
you can use to make your text even better.
| | 05:41 | And to be honest with you, I'm confused
why the Kitchen Sink button is even there.
| | 05:45 | I think that you should always
see all these tools, because what's below
| | 05:49 | the line, is almost more
important than what's above it.
| | 05:52 | And I will show you why.
| | 05:54 | When you lay out text content like
this you often have subheadings and how do
| | 05:58 | you add subheadings inside WordPress?
| | 06:00 | Well, you put your mouse on the
heading you want to be a subheading, and then
| | 06:04 | you go inside the Kitchen Sink here
and you click on the Down arrow next to
| | 06:08 | paragraph and here you find the list of all
your different styles, including all the headings.
| | 06:13 | So let's say I want, this is an ordered
list to be Heading2, I drop it down, I
| | 06:18 | click Heading2 and it gets applied.
| | 06:20 | If I want to change it, I can drop it
down again, change it back to paragraph or
| | 06:25 | I can change with the Heading4 or
change it back to Heading2 again.
| | 06:29 | I also have Underline here,
so now I can underline a word.
| | 06:33 | I have an Alignment feature for Align
Full or Justified, which you should never
| | 06:37 | ever use, and there is a color selector
that I personally don't think you should
| | 06:41 | use either, and then we
have the Paste functions.
| | 06:44 | You have an option for Paste as Plain
Text, which will take any text from any
| | 06:48 | text editor and just strip all the contents,
all you are left with is just the text.
| | 06:53 | You also have the Paste from Word
function, which I personally don't like,
| | 06:57 | because it doesn't really do a very good job,
but you can try it and see if it works for you.
| | 07:01 | You have the Remove Formatting button,
which if you highlight an element that
| | 07:05 | has formatting on it, in this case the
New Yorker, which has an underline, and
| | 07:10 | you click the button,
it'll take that Formatting off.
| | 07:12 | This is great if you have an element
that has compounded formatting, so it
| | 07:16 | might have both, Bold and Italicized and
Underline, and you can get all of it off at once.
| | 07:21 | You have a Custom Character button,
so if you want to insert something like
| | 07:24 | pi symbol or something like that, you click
this and you get a full symbol map of the font.
| | 07:30 | And finally, you have Undo and Redo
buttons which are great, if you write
| | 07:33 | something and then all of a sudden
you realize that was wrong, then you go
| | 07:37 | back and just Undo it.
| | 07:39 | Now you know how all these
buttons work on the toolbar.
| | 07:41 | But I want you to walk away
with one thing in particular.
| | 07:44 | Pay close attention to the Style drop-down box.
| | 07:47 | What I mean by that is when you create
subheadings, always use the subheadings.
| | 07:53 | So you're main heading up here should
always be H1 and it should be in your theme.
| | 07:58 | So if you make a subheading, it should
be H2 and if there's another subheading
| | 08:03 | under H2, it should be H3 and so on.
| | 08:06 | The reason why this matters is because
search engines actually weight content
| | 08:10 | based on how you use these headings.
| | 08:12 | So if you want to search engines to
get an understanding of how your page is
| | 08:15 | structured, you use these headings from
H1, all the way down to H6, to organize
| | 08:21 | your content in a hierarchy.
| | 08:24 | That way the search engines will
understand your content better and be indexed
| | 08:28 | better than if you didn't. Once you
know the text formatting functions in
| | 08:31 | WordPress, they're not all that
different from those found in a Word
| | 08:34 | Processing application.
| | 08:36 | Formatting your text properly makes it
easier to read and more approachable for
| | 08:39 | the people visiting your site.
| | 08:41 | It also makes your content easier
to find and index for search engines.
| | 08:45 | And like always, nothing
is ever final in WordPress.
| | 08:47 | So you can always change things around later.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating and managing links| 00:00 | Links are the fundamental
building blocks of the World Wide Web.
| | 00:03 | In fact, without links there
wouldn't be a World Wide Web to begin with.
| | 00:07 | Links can be attached to many
different elements on a page, most
| | 00:11 | prominently, text and images.
| | 00:13 | Creating links is simply a matter of
attaching an anchor tag with the URL to the
| | 00:17 | target location, to an element on your page.
| | 00:20 | Sounds complicated?
| | 00:21 | I know, but in WordPress
it's actually really simple.
| | 00:24 | To start off you need two elements, a
link target URL which is the address to
| | 00:30 | the page you want to link to, and
the text you want to add the link to.
| | 00:34 | In other words the text you want
to click on so you go to that link.
| | 00:38 | In the text that I have in front of me, I have
the names of two magazines that I want to link to.
| | 00:42 | They're right here, New Yorker and The
Atlantic, and like I said to make a link
| | 00:48 | I first have to have the actual
address to what I want to link to.
| | 00:51 | So I've gone on the Internet and I
found the New Yorker and here's the
| | 00:55 | address, www.newyorker.com.
| | 00:59 | So now I'll go and highlight the text
that I want to create a link out of, and
| | 01:04 | then I'll click the Link button.
| | 01:06 | You see it looks like a chain link,
because it's a link, so I'll click on that
| | 01:10 | and here I can type in the address I
want to link to, so that was newyorker.com.
| | 01:16 | When I create a link I should also
always attach a title to that link.
| | 01:20 | The title is a descriptive text
explaining where the link is pointing.
| | 01:25 | The title appears when you hover your
mouse over a link and it's also important
| | 01:28 | for search engines and for people that
are using accessibility tools, such as a
| | 01:32 | text-to-speech browser, to
understand where these links are going.
| | 01:36 | In this case, since the link
points to the New Yorker, I'll say, Link
| | 01:40 | pointing to the New Yorker.
| | 01:45 | Below that I have a little box I can check
that says, Open link in a new window/tab.
| | 01:48 | You can choose whether you want your
links to open in the current window,
| | 01:53 | which you would normally do for
internal links that are inside your site, or if
| | 01:57 | you want them to open in a separate window
so that people can come back to your site.
| | 02:01 | My rule of thumb is whenever I'm
pointing away from my site to somewhere else, I
| | 02:06 | always check this box, so I'll
check it and I'll click Add Link.
| | 02:10 | Now you see the text changed to a
blue text, I when I hover over it,
| | 02:13 | it says Link pointing to the New Yorker.
| | 02:15 | I can do the same for the Atlantic,
I find The Atlantic on the Web,
| | 02:19 | theatlantic.com, highlight the text,
click the Link button, type it in and
| | 02:27 | say Link to The Atlantic, and I'll
leave the Open link in a new tab checked
| | 02:32 | and click Add Link.
| | 02:34 | Now if I decide, oh, I don't actually
want the link to the Atlantic anyway, I
| | 02:38 | can simply click anywhere inside this
text and click the Unlink button and the
| | 02:44 | link simply disappears.
| | 02:45 | But what if you want to link to
something internal in your own website?
| | 02:48 | Well, you could go and find the URL
to that item, but you don't really have
| | 02:52 | to do that anymore.
| | 02:53 | If I select some text here and click on
the Link button again, and click on,
| | 02:58 | Or link to existing contents, I get a list
here with all the existing content on my site.
| | 03:04 | Now right now I don't really have much
content, but as you get more content, it
| | 03:08 | will all display in a long list down
here, and you can even search for specific
| | 03:12 | content, so that you find
exactly what you're looking for.
| | 03:15 | If I want to link to my Hello World! Post,
| | 03:17 | I'll simply click that post
and the URL along with the title
| | 03:22 | automatically populates.
| | 03:23 | Since this is an internal link that
points to something on my website, I'm going
| | 03:27 | to turn the Open link in a new window
off, so let it opens in the same window
| | 03:32 | and I'll click Add Link.
| | 03:34 | Now you know how to create the links and
you may want to know when do I create links.
| | 03:38 | Well, my general rule is, if I'm
talking about something that I found on some
| | 03:42 | other website or I referenced in other
website or in another blog or a specific
| | 03:47 | article or something like that I
always link directly to that item, so that
| | 03:51 | people can use my information, and then
find further information about that same topic.
| | 03:56 | If I talk about something that's on
my own website, I also link directly to
| | 04:00 | that, so people can see it.
| | 04:02 | Whether I set the link to open in a
separate window or to open in the same
| | 04:05 | window, depends on two things.
| | 04:07 | First of all, if I'm linking away from
my site, I always open it in a separate
| | 04:11 | window, so that once people are done
reading it they can close that window or
| | 04:15 | tab and go back to my website.
| | 04:17 | If I'm linking to internal content on
my website, I usually make it so that it
| | 04:21 | opens in the same window, with one exception.
| | 04:24 | If I'm linking to reference material in
my own website and I think that people
| | 04:28 | will click that before they're done
reading article, I'll still open it in a new
| | 04:32 | window just so that they can jump
back and forth between the two articles.
| | 04:36 | Mastering the science of effective link
use will greatly enhance the quality of
| | 04:39 | your site and make it easier
to navigate for your visitors.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding images and other media content| 00:00 | They say that an image says more than a
thousand words. That may be true, but on
| | 00:05 | the web, an image also makes things
easier to digest, and they can bring both
| | 00:09 | life and context to the text on your pages.
| | 00:12 | WordPress offers several different
ways of storing, sourcing, and including
| | 00:17 | images into your posts and pages, and
also gives you great flexibility when it
| | 00:21 | comes to deciding how those images will be
displayed within the content of that post.
| | 00:27 | Before we look at how we add images
using the Dashboard and the regular Post
| | 00:31 | Editor, let me show you quickly
how we can add an image using the
| | 00:35 | WordPress.com front page.
| | 00:37 | If you're not already on the front page,
you can get there simply by going to
| | 00:41 | the WordPress logo on the
top-left corner and clicking New Post.
| | 00:44 | This will bring you to the
New Post panel on WordPress.com.
| | 00:48 | From here, to add a new photo,
I'm going to click Photo.
| | 00:53 | This brings me to a page where I can
add a new photo, and here I'm going to
| | 00:57 | click to select the photo from my computer.
| | 00:59 | I'll select this one of a woman. And while the
photo is uploading, I'll give the photo a title.
| | 01:06 | I'll give the photo a caption, and I can
also give the photo a link if I want to.
| | 01:11 | If you add a link here, when you click
on the image, it will jump to that link.
| | 01:14 | So, if you wanted, to you could add a
link to Flickr profile, for instance, and
| | 01:21 | then when people click on image,
they'll jump directly to the Flickr profile.
| | 01:24 | I'm not going to do that right now.
| | 01:26 | Finally, you have to add some tags.
| | 01:28 | So, I'll say art, gallery, woman, book.
And when I'm done, I'll click Publish Photo.
| | 01:38 | Now, I can go and view my post, and
here you see the post appears with the
| | 01:44 | title, the image itself, and then the
text that I put in. But what if you wanted
| | 01:50 | to add an image into the text of your post?
| | 01:53 | You can see here that this image
appears at the top, and then we just have some
| | 01:56 | text underneath, but I want to add a
long post with lots of text and then add
| | 02:01 | an image into that context.
| | 02:03 | In that case, you need to use
the regular Dashboard Editor.
| | 02:06 | So, what I've done is I've created a post here.
| | 02:09 | It has some standard content, and what I
want to do is add an image into this post.
| | 02:14 | This is where you'll do the most of your work.
| | 02:16 | So, let's say I want to add an image.
| | 02:18 | The first thing I need to do is place my
cursor where that image is going to appear.
| | 02:23 | I'll place my cursor at the very
beginning of the post, because I want the image
| | 02:26 | to appear in the first paragraph.
| | 02:28 | Then I'm going to click to Add Media
button, and if you've used Wordpress.com
| | 02:32 | before, you may have noticed
that this Add Media button is new.
| | 02:35 | This is something that came out with
the WordPress 3.5, which was released
| | 02:39 | in December of 2012.
| | 02:41 | The Add Media button is a whole new
functionality that comes with WordPress 3.5.
| | 02:46 | A whole handling of media has been
changed, and when I click on the button,
| | 02:50 | you'll see that
everything looks quite different.
| | 02:52 | So, I'll click Add Media, and you see,
here we have the new Add Media panel.
| | 02:57 | The Add Media panel is far more advanced
than the old one, and it has some really
| | 03:01 | cool new functionality.
| | 03:03 | So, let's first see what
happens when we add a new picture.
| | 03:06 | So here, I can either drag and drop a
picture from my desktop or I can click
| | 03:10 | Select Files to get a picture in.
| | 03:12 | I'm going to go and find a picture on
my desktop here, and I'm simply going to
| | 03:17 | drag and drop it in.
| | 03:18 | And now you see the image gets
uploaded into WordPress.com, and I can also
| | 03:22 | see all the other images that are
associated with my site that I've already uploaded.
| | 03:27 | Now that the image is uploaded and checked,
I can change information about the image.
| | 03:33 | When you upload an image to WordPress,
WordPress needs to give the image a
| | 03:36 | title, and the title is usually grabbed
from the title of the file itself, which
| | 03:41 | is not very descriptive.
| | 03:43 | The title is used by
WordPress to track the image.
| | 03:46 | So, when you upload a new image,
you should always give it a title that
| | 03:48 | describes the image, so that later if
you want to use the image again, you can
| | 03:52 | do a search and then find
the image that has that title.
| | 03:57 | You can also give the image a caption,
and this is something really cool.
| | 04:00 | The caption is that text that
appears directly under the image and is
| | 04:03 | associated with the image.
| | 04:05 | With WordPress 3.5, you can now add
HTML to the caption, meaning you can add
| | 04:10 | a link inside a caption or you can make
text bold or italicized or do other things.
| | 04:16 | This is a new feature, and it's a very powerful,
| | 04:18 | so I urge you to experiment
with it and see what you can do.
| | 04:22 | Here I'm going to put in some text
with some bold text and as you can see,
| | 04:30 | this strong tag and end strong tag is what
signifies that this text, SAMOCA, is going to be bold.
| | 04:38 | The last thing I need to do
is put in an alternate text.
| | 04:41 | This is not technically required by
WordPress, but it is required by web standards.
| | 04:47 | The alternate text is what
appears if the image does not appear.
| | 04:51 | Let's say the image didn't download
properly onto the browser when someone
| | 04:54 | visits the site, or they're using a
browser that doesn't see images, or they
| | 04:58 | may be visually impaired, or in the case of a
search engine, they can't see images at all.
| | 05:04 | The alternate text takes the place
of an image, so adding a descriptive
| | 05:08 | alternate text makes
your sites easier to access.
| | 05:12 | Like I said, it is
required to meet web standard.
| | 05:15 | The alternate text should be
a description of the image.
| | 05:19 | So, I'll say, SAMOCA gallery on a sunny day.
| | 05:25 | At the bottom here, you can also add a
description if you want to, but it's not
| | 05:29 | necessary if you don't want to.
| | 05:31 | Once you've added all the information--
so the title, an optional caption, and the
| | 05:35 | alternate text--it's time to
insert the image into your post.
| | 05:39 | When you do that, you can choose the
alignment of the image, so you can set it
| | 05:43 | to Left, Center, or Right.
| | 05:45 | Left and Right work exactly like
they would in a word processor.
| | 05:49 | If you set the image to the Left, the
text floats to the right, and if you set
| | 05:53 | the image to the Right,
the text floats to the left.
| | 05:56 | If you set it at the Center, the image
will center and all the text will either
| | 05:59 | be above it or below it.
| | 06:01 | If you set it to None, the image will
appear in the context of the text, and
| | 06:06 | this very rarely works the way you want it to,
| | 06:08 | so I always recommend either
choosing Left, Center, or Right.
| | 06:12 | In this case, I want the image to appear to
the right of my column, so I'll just click Right.
| | 06:17 | Then I can choose whether or not I want
to link the image somewhere. If I drop
| | 06:22 | down here, you can see I can now set a
Custom URL pointing the image anywhere I want to.
| | 06:28 | I can also link directly to the
Attachment page for that image which is the
| | 06:32 | single page that displays only the image
and the information associated with the
| | 06:36 | image. Or I can select Media File, which
points directly to the original image.
| | 06:41 | I'm going to leave this at None,
and then I'm going to pick a size.
| | 06:45 | Now, depending on your setup, you get
different types of sizes available here.
| | 06:48 | You usually have Thumbnail,
Medium, Large, and Full-Size.
| | 06:52 | So, here you can choose what
size works with what you're doing.
| | 06:56 | In this case, I'm going to select
Thumbnail and then click Insert into Post.
| | 07:02 | Now, you see the image appears here, to
the right of my content, and you have the
| | 07:07 | caption. And if I preview these
changes in my browser, you'll see the image
| | 07:12 | appears with the caption next to my text.
| | 07:16 | If I want to change the positioning of
the image, I can go back into the editor,
| | 07:21 | click on the image, and click on the Edit
Image button. And here I can change the
| | 07:26 | Alignment; I can set it to Left.
| | 07:28 | I can also edit my caption or my alternate text.
| | 07:31 | I can add a link if I want to. And when
I update the page, and preview changes
| | 07:39 | again, you'll see now the image is on
the left and the text is on the right.
| | 07:47 | Now, here's a little tip.
| | 07:49 | Sometimes you place an image in your
post and then you realize it's in the wrong
| | 07:52 | place and you need to move it.
| | 07:54 | If the image doesn't have a caption,
you can simply grab the image with your
| | 07:58 | mouse and move it around, but if it has
a caption, that doesn't really work all
| | 08:02 | that well, because in many cases
it will break the code of your page.
| | 08:05 | So, my recommendation is this:
| | 08:07 | if you're going to move your image,
first go to the editor and cut out the
| | 08:13 | caption, update the image, and now you
can grab the image with your mouse and
| | 08:19 | drag it somewhere else.
| | 08:20 | I'm going to grab it here to the
second paragraph, and then I'll go in.
| | 08:24 | Click on the image.
| | 08:25 | Click on Edit, and then
paste the caption back in.
| | 08:29 | Now, I can update my post, preview the
changes, and you'll see the image now
| | 08:38 | appears on the second
paragraph instead of the first.
| | 08:41 | As you can see, adding images
to your posts is really simple.
| | 08:45 | And once you know how to do it and
how to manipulate and move those images
| | 08:49 | around once they're inside your post,
you're able to create nice-looking pages
| | 08:54 | with lots of images and
text that work in unison.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding an image gallery| 00:00 | So far, you've seen how you can add
single images into your posts, but sometimes
| | 00:05 | you want to add image galleries
instead of just single images.
| | 00:08 | With the recent update to WordPress.com,
adding image galleries is now easier than ever.
| | 00:14 | Let me show you how to do it.
| | 00:15 | I'm going to create a new post, and
I'll call this post Image gallery.
| | 00:22 | I'll place my cursor where I want the
gallery to appear, and then I'll click Add Media.
| | 00:27 | Now, I'm going to select a series of
images from my computer that I'm going to
| | 00:31 | use for my post. I'll select these
four and upload them into my post.
| | 00:36 | As you can see, because I uploaded
several images, they all get checked
| | 00:40 | right off the bat so that I have all the
images checked and I'm ready to make a gallery.
| | 00:45 | But before I can publish my gallery,
I need to make sure I have a title and an
| | 00:50 | alternate text on my image and if I
want to, I can also add a caption.
| | 00:54 | So I'm going to give each of these
images the title Untitled 1 through 4. I'll
| | 00:58 | set the caption and alternate text
and then I'll select the next image, give
| | 01:05 | the title Untitled 2, give it a
caption, and an alternate text.
| | 01:13 | I'll select a third image.
| | 01:17 | This may seem really cumbersome, that
I have to add a title and an alternate
| | 01:21 | text and a caption to each individual image,
| | 01:24 | but it's really important, because
once you add an image into your media
| | 01:27 | gallery, you need to give all these
information so that you can use it again
| | 01:31 | later, and you'll see what I'm
talking about in a few seconds.
| | 01:34 | But first, I'm going to create a gallery.
As you can see, each of my images are
| | 01:38 | now checked, which means I have four
images in my gallery. If I don't want all
| | 01:42 | four, I can always uncheck one of them,
but I do want all four. And because I
| | 01:47 | have four selected--you can see it
down here, four selected--I can click
| | 01:51 | Create a new gallery.
| | 01:54 | Here, I got the Media Gallery Editor, where
I can change my gallery in any way I want.
| | 01:59 | I can grab an image and move it around
to change the order, and I can also change
| | 02:06 | where each of these thumbnails is
going to point to, because the gallery
| | 02:09 | displays small versions of the images.
| | 02:12 | So I can choose whether I want the
thumbnails to point to the Attachment page
| | 02:16 | for the image or the Media File,
which means the image itself.
| | 02:19 | In this case, I'm going to leave it at
Attachment page. And finally, I can choose
| | 02:23 | how many columns I want to
display, so I'll leave that at 3.
| | 02:27 | I'll click Insert into gallery to
insert the gallery, and here you can see that
| | 02:31 | inside the WordPress Editor, you don't
get to see the gallery; you just get this
| | 02:35 | preview of the gallery here.
| | 02:37 | So I'm going to check a category for this and
publish the post so that we can take a look at it.
| | 02:46 | Once the post is published, you get to
see the gallery, and here you see we have
| | 02:50 | the thumbnails for each of the images.
And if you click on one of them, you jump
| | 02:54 | directly to the Attachment page for that image.
| | 02:56 | In this case, it's in a gallery, so you
can see the first image and then you can
| | 03:01 | navigate to the next one and
the next one and the next one.
| | 03:05 | But what if I want to edit this gallery?
| | 03:07 | Let's say I have an image I already
uploaded to WordPress a long time ago that I
| | 03:12 | want add into the gallery.
| | 03:13 | Previously, that was really hard
because WordPress.com didn't really allow you
| | 03:17 | to add images from other posts unless
you went in and changed the code a bit.
| | 03:22 | But now that's no longer a problem.
| | 03:24 | If I go back to the editor and click
on my image gallery and click Edit Image
| | 03:30 | Gallery, all I need to do to add new
images is to either go to Upload Images or
| | 03:35 | to Media Library and then select
additional images I want to add.
| | 03:39 | Let's say I want to add this blue image here.
| | 03:42 | I'll select it. I have to give it a
title and an alternate text, and then I'll
| | 03:48 | click Add to Gallery.
| | 03:50 | Now, I can go back to edit my
gallery and you'll see we now have five
| | 03:54 | images instead of four, but only
four of these images were images I
| | 03:58 | uploaded to the post.
| | 03:59 | The fifth one was one I uploaded to
WordPress.com previously that I only now
| | 04:03 | associated with my image gallery.
| | 04:06 | I also see that I forgot to give this
image a caption, so I can do it right in
| | 04:10 | here, from the Gallery Editor, and when
I click Update Gallery and Preview my
| | 04:17 | Changes, you'll see that my gallery
now has five images instead of four.
| | 04:23 | If you've ever played around with the
WordPress galleries before, you'll see
| | 04:26 | that this is a major update, and it make
things a lot easier, because now you can
| | 04:30 | create really advanced image galleries
using any image from inside your media
| | 04:36 | gallery on WordPress.com.
| | 04:38 | Adding a simple image gallery inside
WordPress.com based on the images you've
| | 04:42 | already uploaded to Wordpress.com or
new images that you are uploading to
| | 04:46 | WordPress.com is now easier than ever,
and because of the new features that came
| | 04:51 | in the most recent update to
WordPress.com, your image galleries can now be
| | 04:56 | edited at any time, and you can add and
subtract any image you want to, as long as
| | 05:00 | they were uploaded to WordPress.com.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding images from URLs and other external sources| 00:00 | One of the things I find really
fascinating about the web is that things are
| | 00:04 | seldom what they seem.
| | 00:06 | Take images for example. When you look
at a page like this that has images, you
| | 00:10 | assume that the images live on that
page, but they don't actually live on the
| | 00:14 | page at all; they're what's called
replaced elements. Let me explain.
| | 00:18 | When you're looking at this page,
what you're seeing is four images, but what's
| | 00:23 | actually happening is you're seeing a
page that has four boxes with the gray
| | 00:29 | borders and then what the browser has
done is it has cut four holes and it's
| | 00:34 | displaying the content of
an image inside those holes.
| | 00:38 | If you look at the code, you'll see that
in place of an image, all you have is a
| | 00:42 | URL pointing directly to
an image file on the web.
| | 00:47 | So when you uploaded an image to
WordPress.com, that image got stored on the
| | 00:51 | server, and then in the page you were
displaying that image, you see a simple URL reference.
| | 00:57 | That means when you upload an image
to WordPress.com and you want to use it
| | 01:01 | on several different pages, you don't have
to keep uploading new versions of the image;
| | 01:06 | you just use the same image over and
over again, because the image doesn't live
| | 01:10 | on the post, it lives on the server
and it's just referenced in the posts.
| | 01:15 | That also means you don't have to
upload an image to your own server; you can
| | 01:20 | grab an image from somewhere else on
the web and display it in your site, and
| | 01:23 | it will behave exactly the same as what you're
seeing here. But there are some caveats to this.
| | 01:29 | So let me and give you an example
| | 01:31 | Let's say you go to Flickr and you find
an image you like that you want to use.
| | 01:35 | You can use it, but you have to make
sure you have the right to use it first.
| | 01:40 | A good rule of thumb when working with
images on the web is to say that unless
| | 01:44 | you took the picture yourself,
you probably don't have the right to use it.
| | 01:47 | And if you find an image you really
want to use, you have to make sure you
| | 01:51 | have the right to use it.
| | 01:52 | A service like Flickr is great for this
particular purpose, because every image
| | 01:56 | uploaded to Flickr has an associated
license with it, and you can find out if
| | 02:01 | you're allowed to use that image or not.
| | 02:03 | If you find an image on Flickr,
you scroll down and you find the section that
| | 02:07 | says License and from here, you can
click on a link that takes you to the
| | 02:11 | license for that image, and it'll tell you
whether or not you're allowed to use that image.
| | 02:15 | In this case you're allowed to share
the image, to copy it, distribute it, and
| | 02:19 | transmit the image itself, as long as you
give attribution, as long as you're not
| | 02:24 | earning money by doing so, and as
long as you're not altering the image and
| | 02:28 | creating a new image out of it.
| | 02:31 | If you find an image on the web that
doesn't have a license attached to it,
| | 02:35 | the best practice is to simply contact the
photographer and ask if you can use the image.
| | 02:40 | Until you get an actual response that
says, yes, you can use the image and
| | 02:44 | you have in writing, you should
never use the image, because you are
| | 02:47 | technically stealing it.
| | 02:50 | But I have the right to use this image
in my page, so I'm going to do just that.
| | 02:54 | The first thing I need to do is create a
new post, so I'll go and create a new
| | 02:59 | post. I'll call it My wooden monkey,
and I'll put in some text, and then I'll
| | 03:07 | place my cursor where I want the
image to appear, just like I did when I
| | 03:11 | uploaded an image manually.
| | 03:12 | To add the image, I'm going to click
Add Media, and then instead of selecting
| | 03:17 | Upload Files or an image from the Media
Library, I'm going to click From URL.
| | 03:23 | Here, I can paste in a new URL to an
image anywhere on the web and that image
| | 03:27 | will appear in my site.
| | 03:28 | To get that URL, I'm going to go
back to Flickr, select Actions, and View
| | 03:33 | all sizes, find the size I want, and then
right-click on the image and click Copy image URL.
| | 03:42 | I'll paste that URL in here and then
WordPress notices, hey, this is an image?
| | 03:47 | That means it'll probably need
a caption and an alternate text.
| | 03:51 | So in the caption, I'll put in a
description of the image along with the
| | 03:54 | attribution, because that's the license.
| | 03:57 | So, I'll say Wooden monkey
by Morten Rand-Hendriksen.
| | 04:04 | Alternate text, it's the same as
always: a description of the image.
| | 04:12 | And because this is an image, I can choose
Alignment--Left, Center, Right or None--
| | 04:17 | I'll set it to Center. And I can also link to
either the image itself or to the custom URL.
| | 04:24 | Now, because I'm taking the image from
Flickr, Flickr requires that if you click
| | 04:28 | on the image, you jump back to
the image page for that image.
| | 04:32 | So, I have to go back to the photo
page here and copy that URL and say Custom
| | 04:39 | URL and paste it in.
| | 04:41 | Now that everything is set, I can click
Insert into post. You see the image up here.
| | 04:46 | I'll save my draft and click Preview
and when I scroll down, you see here's my
| | 04:54 | title, here's my image with the
caption, and the text underneath.
| | 05:00 | And everything else works exactly as
it would if this was an image I uploaded
| | 05:04 | myself, but as you saw, this image lives
on flickr.com. And when I click on it, I
| | 05:11 | jump to the original.
| | 05:13 | But adding content from another site
isn't exclusively about adding images.
| | 05:17 | In many cases, you'll want to add
YouTube videos or videos from other sources,
| | 05:22 | and that's actually even easier
than adding an image. And I'll show you
| | 05:26 | exactly what I mean here.
| | 05:28 | Let's say I go to YouTube and I find a
video I really like and I want to share it.
| | 05:32 | (video playing)
| | 05:37 | I want to share this video on my site.
| | 05:40 | All I have to do is go back to WordPress,
create a new post, call it Meet Jim video.
| | 05:47 | I'll say, "Check out this video I found."
| | 05:55 | And now I went to add the video to my post.
| | 05:57 | The easiest way to do that is through a
shortcut, and I'll show you how that works.
| | 06:01 | I'll go to this Text tab so that I see
the source code of my page, and then I'll
| | 06:09 | go to YouTube, find the URL, and make
sure that the URL looks like this, that it
| | 06:14 | doesn't have tons of extra
stuff after this long code.
| | 06:17 | I'll copy the URL, paste it in, I'll
set a category, and publish the post.
| | 06:26 | And here, as if by magic, the video
appears. Now, you'll remember, all I did was copy the
| | 06:36 | URL and paste it into the post,
| | 06:39 | yet the video appears and it's playable--
| | 06:45 | (video playing)
-- right inside my post.
| | 06:47 | That's because WordPress.com is clever
enough to understand that that YouTube
| | 06:51 | URL is in fact from YouTube and that
there's probably a video on that page.
| | 06:56 | So what WordPress does is it
goes to YouTube and says, hey,
| | 06:59 | can I have the video? Thank you.
| | 07:01 | And then it puts the video into your
site, and it works exactly like a regular
| | 07:06 | YouTube video. You can go full screen,
you can jump directly to YouTube, you can
| | 07:10 | turn on and off captioning, and
everything works exactly like it would.
| | 07:14 | But all you did was add that URL.
| | 07:17 | If you want to add other content to it,
you can go back and edit your post,
| | 07:22 | you can go to Visual add text above,
you can also add images if you like,
| | 07:30 | click Add Media and pick any image from your
Media Library or an image from somewhere else.
| | 07:39 | and when you update it and view your
post, you'll see that you have Text above,
| | 07:47 | you have the video, you have Text
below and you have the image and everything
| | 07:51 | else works exactly like it would normally do.
| | 07:53 | So as you can see, adding videos
simply requires finding the URL--either on
| | 07:59 | YouTube, or Vimeo, or on many
other video sites that allow embedding--
| | 08:05 | copy the URL, go into your editor, and
paste it in in the Text view. That way
| | 08:11 | WordPress.com will notice that it's a
video, and it will embed it for you and you
| | 08:14 | don t have to worry about
any other complicated stuff.
| | 08:18 | Adding media from external sources
allows you to share content you produced
| | 08:21 | yourself or content you found online
with your readers, bringing attention to
| | 08:26 | the originator and making the content available.
| | 08:29 | Just be careful you don't end up in
advertently stealing content or breaking
| | 08:33 | licenses in the process.
| | 08:35 | Adding images and video is pretty easy.
Getting the attribution right and doing
| | 08:40 | your due diligence is also easy.
| | 08:43 | So go and do it!
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding categories, tags, post formats, excerpts, and other elements| 00:00 | In addition to writing the post itself,
WordPress gives you the ability to
| | 00:04 | attach extra information and customize
the way the post displays and behaves
| | 00:08 | through the use of built-in functions.
| | 00:11 | These include categories and tags for
organization and trackbacks, discussions
| | 00:15 | and sharing options for
display and functionality.
| | 00:18 | All of these functions could be
found in the Post Editor window.
| | 00:21 | Now you may remember earlier in this
course I talked about how Posts and Pages
| | 00:27 | are different and how Posts are
organized based on Categories, Dates, Tags
| | 00:32 | and Authors. All that is
controlled from within the Post.
| | 00:37 | So far in this course we've only talked
about how to create the content of the post.
| | 00:41 | Now we are going to start talking about
how to manage all that metadata that's
| | 00:44 | attached to that post.
| | 00:46 | That's the information you use to be
able to filter content on your website and
| | 00:50 | make it easier for people to
find what they're looking for.
| | 00:53 | If I go back into my Draft here, you'll
see that although I have a Title, some
| | 00:58 | Text and an Image, I haven't actually
attached any real metadata to it yet.
| | 01:03 | As a result, my post is
currently categorized as Uncategorized.
| | 01:08 | This is the default category that
WordPress creates, because every posts needs
| | 01:12 | to have a category, but
it's not very descriptive.
| | 01:16 | So what I want to do now
first, is create a New category.
| | 01:19 | To do so I am simply going to click the
Add New Category button, it opens in new
| | 01:24 | field where I can create a category and
I'll create a new category called News.
| | 01:28 | When I click Add New Category, the News
category appears and now I can uncheck
| | 01:34 | the Uncategorized box.
| | 01:36 | That way my posts will be categorized
under News, rather than Uncategorized.
| | 01:41 | Of course I could add more categories.
| | 01:44 | I could create another category
called Press Releases and click Add New
| | 01:48 | Category again and now I have two
categories and I can choose to either check
| | 01:53 | or uncheck each of these.
| | 01:55 | If you have a lot of categories on
your site and you have a hard time finding
| | 01:58 | the ones you use the most, you can
also click the Most Used box, it will show
| | 02:02 | you the most frequently used categories.
| | 02:05 | You can also sort based on Tags.
| | 02:07 | Tags appear directly below categories
and unlike categories they don't appear in
| | 02:11 | a drop-down, instead you
just simply type them in.
| | 02:14 | So in this case, I am going to add
showcase and building and photography and
| | 02:23 | you'll notice that as I am adding in
these tags, I am putting a comma between
| | 02:26 | them to separate them.
| | 02:27 | You'll also notice if I type in a tag
that already exists in the system, like I
| | 02:31 | start by typing photo, the system
will automatically suggest photo as an
| | 02:35 | option, and I just arrow down to
select it and hit Return, and that way I now
| | 02:40 | have all those four tags.
| | 02:42 | If I want to remove one, I can simply click
the X button next to it and it disappears.
| | 02:48 | And just like the categories, I can
click this Choose from the most used tags
| | 02:52 | link to see the most used tags.
| | 02:56 | If I enabled Geolocation in my user
settings, I can also add a geolocation to my
| | 03:02 | post so that people can see
physically where the post was posted.
| | 03:06 | I can choose whether or not I want to do this.
| | 03:08 | If I don't want to do it I can simply
uncheck this, this post location as public
| | 03:13 | and it won't be displayed.
| | 03:15 | But I'm going to leave it on for now.
| | 03:17 | If we go to the main area, you'll see
that below the Editor I have an option for
| | 03:22 | Writing Helper, which will be covered
later, and I also have discussion where I
| | 03:26 | can choose to Allow or Disallow
comments and Allow or Disallow trackbacks and
| | 03:30 | pingbacks on the page.
| | 03:31 | So I want to allow comments, but
not allow trackbacks and pingbacks.
| | 03:36 | But there are also more options here.
| | 03:37 | If I go up to the top and I click
Screen Options, you'll see that some of the
| | 03:42 | options have been hidden, but I am going to
reactivate them all, so you can see all of it.
| | 03:46 | So I'll click on every single one
and scroll down, so you can see all
| | 03:55 | these options appear.
| | 03:56 | First off we have Likes and Shares,
which allows me to show or hide the
| | 04:00 | WordPress Like button and show or
hide the sharing buttons on the post.
| | 04:04 | In most cases you want to leave both on.
| | 04:07 | You also have the Excerpt.
| | 04:09 | This is what's displayed in
certain themes when you're only showing a
| | 04:12 | short version of it.
| | 04:13 | If you don't put in an Excerpt,
WordPress will automatically grab the first
| | 04:18 | part of your article.
| | 04:19 | But in many cases when you write an
article you start it off in a way that
| | 04:23 | doesn't really work as an Excerpt. In
that case you should go down and write a
| | 04:28 | separate excerpt here that is more
descriptive, it should be short, may be a 160
| | 04:32 | characters or less, and just be
really descriptive of the post itself.
| | 04:37 | You can also manually Send trackbacks.
| | 04:39 | Trackbacks tell other websites that
you're referencing them and here you can put
| | 04:43 | in multiple URLs to the places you want
to Send trackbacks to, if you want to.
| | 04:49 | Below that we have Discussion
where you can Allow or Disallow comments
| | 04:53 | and you have the Slug.
| | 04:54 | The Slug is the actual name of the post here.
| | 04:58 | You can put in something like
a shorter Slug if you want to.
| | 05:01 | And at the very bottom you
have Author and Revisions.
| | 05:04 | So if you have multiple authors in your
blog, and let's say I started writing it,
| | 05:08 | but I was writing it on behalf of
someone else, I could use this drop-down to
| | 05:11 | select a different Author.
| | 05:13 | Revisions is a really neat idea.
| | 05:15 | If you're writing a post, you tend to
save it and then come back later and then
| | 05:19 | make some changes, and you might
accidentally make a change you don't like.
| | 05:24 | In that case you can go back in the
Revision history and open any earlier version
| | 05:29 | of your posts and then copy out the
code from that post and paste it back in.
| | 05:35 | That way you can see the difference
between what you've done before and what
| | 05:38 | you're doing now and you'll never be
in a situation where you lose content
| | 05:42 | because you accidentally deleted it.
| | 05:46 | Depending on what your site is about
and how you use it, you may want to turn
| | 05:49 | some of these features on and off.
| | 05:51 | Personally, I would probably leave
Trackbacks, Slug, Author and Revisions off,
| | 05:59 | because I rarely use them, and because I
know that if I need to use them at some
| | 06:03 | point, I can just go and reactivate them.
| | 06:05 | It just makes my editing space less cluttered.
| | 06:08 | When I work on a post, I
always work in the same order.
| | 06:11 | I start by giving it a Title, I then
write the whole post, then I give it a
| | 06:15 | Category, a Tag and make sure that my
Likes and Shares are in order, and if
| | 06:21 | necessary, I'll write an Excerpt so that
there is a short description of what I'm doing.
| | 06:25 | Finally, I'll make sure that my
Commenting is turned on and my Trackbacks are
| | 06:29 | turned off and then I'll Save the post.
| | 06:34 | WordPress is built around the idea of
organizing and structuring your content
| | 06:39 | using Categories, Tags and other elements.
| | 06:42 | And by knowing the user interface in the
Edit Post panel, you'll be able to take
| | 06:46 | advantage of all of these features
the way they're supposed to be used.
| | 06:50 | It may seem tedious at first, but in
reality this is just a matter of habit.
| | 06:54 | Once you get used to a certain way of
doing things, it becomes a habit and you
| | 06:58 | don't have to worry about it anymore.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using built-in tools to improve posts| 00:00 | If you publish a lot of content on your
site, or if you're like me and you just
| | 00:04 | want to get things stored and
published immediately, wordPress.com has some
| | 00:09 | clever tools that will help you get
your content up to snuff and published
| | 00:12 | easier, quicker, and hopefully, better.
| | 00:15 | If you look at one of the articles
you've written, you'll see right away that
| | 00:18 | there are some tools available.
| | 00:20 | The most common one is the Proofread
Writing tool or the Spellchecker.
| | 00:25 | But the Proofread Writing actually
goes beyond just spellchecking.
| | 00:27 | You'll see now if I click on it, it'll
simply do some basic spellchecking and
| | 00:31 | it'll tell me that this is not the
word it recognizes, because it's an artist
| | 00:35 | name and it also underlines this repeated
word and gives me suggestions on how to fix it.
| | 00:40 | However, this spellchecker does more
than just fix incorrectly spelled words.
| | 00:46 | You may remember that under Users>
Personal Settings you had quite advanced
| | 00:52 | options under Proofreading.
| | 00:54 | So if I go into my profile, and I
turn on all of these extra functions,
| | 01:02 | and Save it, and go back to my Draft, and
click on the Proofreading again, I get
| | 01:12 | some more warnings.
| | 01:14 | This one is a Complex Expression,
| | 01:17 | this is Passive voice, and so on.
| | 01:20 | So by activating all these
proofreading features, you get more feedback
| | 01:24 | about how you're writing your content and
whether or not people are going to understand it.
| | 01:28 | And it's a great little feature if you
like to be nitpicky about what you do.
| | 01:32 | In addition to the Proofreading
we also have two features down here
| | 01:36 | under Writing Helper.
| | 01:37 | The first one is called Copy a Post, and
it simply allows us to take a post that
| | 01:41 | we already wrote and copy it into a
new post and then use that as a template.
| | 01:47 | I actually I use this a lot when I
write tutorials because I have this standard
| | 01:51 | setup for tutorials.
| | 01:53 | So what I've done is I've created a
post in drafts that is kind of a template
| | 01:57 | for all my tutorials.
| | 01:59 | And then every time I create a new
tutorial I go and copy that post and start
| | 02:04 | from that point, that way I know that all
my tutorials are structured the same way.
| | 02:07 | Next to Copy a Post you also have
a feature called Request Feedback.
| | 02:12 | It's a neat little feature that, if you
click on it, opens a small panel where you
| | 02:16 | can enter the e-mail addresses of
people you want to send your article to,
| | 02:20 | before it gets published, that way
they can give you feedback on your article
| | 02:24 | and you can include that feedback in
your article before it gets published.
| | 02:30 | Together the Request Feedback, the
Proofreader, and the Copy a Post functions
| | 02:34 | provide an environment that makes it
easier to create quality content that's up
| | 02:39 | to snuff, and that people actually
enjoy reading. And it makes life easier for
| | 02:43 | you, which to be honest is
the most important thing.
| | 02:46 | Having a second pair of eyes, digital or
human, looking over your posts can help
| | 02:50 | ensure that it is top-quality, and
having the ability to quickly copy existing
| | 02:54 | posts when you want to publish
something fast, can be a huge help.
| | 02:58 | Combine them and you get a Web
publishing application that goes above and beyond
| | 03:02 | to get your stuff onto the Internet
and in front of your fans, right away.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Publishing a post| 00:00 | Once you've written your post, you've
given it a title, you've fleshed out the
| | 00:04 | content, you've added images, tagged
the images, added categories, done the
| | 00:08 | spellchecking, the reviewing, and
all that stuff, it's time to publish.
| | 00:13 | The publishing is done in the Publishing
Panel at the top corner of the right side.
| | 00:17 | You've already seen the use to Save
Draft and Preview buttons previously in this
| | 00:21 | course, but now we'll take a look
at the rest of the functions here.
| | 00:25 | First off, you have the Status.
| | 00:27 | By default, any post you write
will be set to a Draft Status.
| | 00:31 | The Draft Status is
exactly that; it's just a draft.
| | 00:34 | If you want to change the status, you
can click on Edit and you get a dropdown
| | 00:37 | where you can change to
Pending Review if you want to.
| | 00:40 | This is especially useful if you have
several authors on your blog and you want
| | 00:44 | someone else to review your content.
| | 00:46 | It also kicks in if you have a
contributor to your blog, who can log in, but
| | 00:50 | doesn't have publishing rights.
| | 00:52 | When they click Publish, their story
will automatically be set to Pending Review
| | 00:56 | and the administrator can go in and
check the story before it gets published.
| | 01:00 | If you want to make a change to the
status, you select the change and click OK,
| | 01:05 | otherwise you click Cancel.
| | 01:07 | Underneath Status, you have Visibility.
| | 01:09 | You have three levels of
visibility for any post on WordPress.com.
| | 01:13 | It's either Public,
Password protected, or Private.
| | 01:17 | It's pretty self-explanatory
of what's going on here.
| | 01:19 | If you set it to Private, only people who are
registered users of your site can see your post.
| | 01:24 | If you set it to Password protected,
when you visit the post, you get a prompt
| | 01:28 | asking for the password, and only if
you add the password can you see it.
| | 01:32 | In addition to the three statuses,
there's also this extra box that says, Stick
| | 01:36 | this post to the front page.
| | 01:38 | If you check this box, it makes the post sticky.
| | 01:42 | By sticky I mean that it'll stick to
the top of the front page, even if other
| | 01:46 | posts are posted after it, because as
you remember, a blog will always display
| | 01:51 | the most recently posted article at the
top, except when there are sticky posts.
| | 01:56 | In the case of sticky posts, the sticky
posts appear first and then you'll see
| | 02:00 | the most recently published article.
| | 02:03 | Below Visibility, you have the calendar
line that shows when this post will be
| | 02:07 | published on, and if you click
Edit, you can change the date.
| | 02:10 | Now that might seem weird, but
there are some very clever uses of this.
| | 02:14 | First of all, you can use this to
schedule your posts for later release.
| | 02:19 | This is great if you write something
like a series of posts, or you're going to
| | 02:23 | go away on vacation, and you
prepare by writing content in advance.
| | 02:28 | What you can do is go in here and plug
in the exact date and time you want each
| | 02:32 | post to be published, and WordPress
will hold the stories back until that time
| | 02:36 | is reached and then will publish them for you.
| | 02:38 | So that, even though you're away on
vacation, your visitors will see that the
| | 02:43 | post gets updated on a daily
basis and things are coming in.
| | 02:46 | The other great way of using this is,
if you have an original site somewhere
| | 02:50 | else and you're moving to WordPress.com,
you may already have content that was
| | 02:55 | published previously and you want to
retain the original publishing date.
| | 02:59 | If that's the case you can move your
content in here and then go in and change
| | 03:02 | the publishing date back to when it was
originally published, so you retain that information.
| | 03:08 | If you change the date, let's say I
schedule this for two days from now and
| | 03:12 | click OK, you'll notice that my button
changes from Publish to Schedule, and I
| | 03:17 | will set this post into the
queue to be scheduled later.
| | 03:20 | I can then go back and edit it back to
today's date, Click OK, and the button
| | 03:25 | changes back to Publish.
| | 03:26 | When I've done all my settings and I'm
satisfied with them, I now have two choices.
| | 03:30 | I can either move the posts to Trash,
which basically means throwing it away,
| | 03:34 | or I can click the Publish button.
| | 03:36 | So I'll click the Publish button.
| | 03:39 | My proofreader will check my content
and tell me, there's a lot of stuff here
| | 03:43 | that you really need to update.
| | 03:45 | I'm just going to click OK to
publish to post instead, and then I'm taken
| | 03:52 | directly to this new view in
WordPress.com, and this is great.
| | 03:55 | On the right side, you see the
posts published on your website;
| | 03:59 | and on the left side, you get all this
extra information and tools about your post.
| | 04:03 | WordPress will tell you how many posts
you've created so far and give you links
| | 04:07 | to edit the posts or create a new post.
| | 04:10 | It'll show you your current goal,
because WordPress.com now has a series of
| | 04:14 | goals it wants you to achieve
to get you posting more content.
| | 04:18 | It also gives you direct links to
share your content on Twitter and Facebook
| | 04:22 | and other services, so you can push
your content out to all your friends and
| | 04:25 | your followers, and they can go and
check it out right away. And at the bottom
| | 04:29 | here, it suggests tags, because in
my posts I didn't add any tags but you
| | 04:34 | really should add tags.
| | 04:35 | So what WordPress does is it goes
through your post, reads your contents, finds
| | 04:40 | tags it thinks apply to your content,
and suggests them, and all you have to do
| | 04:45 | is select the tags you think fit.
| | 04:47 | And as I select them,
they become added to my post.
| | 04:52 | Now that your post is published,
we can go and make changes to it.
| | 04:56 | So I'll go back to my Dashboard
and go to Posts and look at it.
| | 05:01 | But instead of editing it in the Full
Edit View, I'm going to hover over this
| | 05:05 | and select Quick Edits.
| | 05:07 | From here, I can make quick changes.
| | 05:09 | So what you see, I can make
change to the Title of the Slug.
| | 05:12 | I can change the Date of release and
set a Password or set it to Private.
| | 05:17 | I can change my Categories.
| | 05:18 | I can add or remove Tags.
| | 05:20 | I can allow or disallow Comments and
Pings, and I can even change the Status
| | 05:24 | from Published back to Drafts and make
the post sticky. But even cooler than
| | 05:28 | that, I can also make changes to
multiple posts at the same time.
| | 05:31 | Let's say, I want to publish all
these three posts simultaneously.
| | 05:35 | I'll check them, go to this Bulk
Actions dropdown and select Edits and click
| | 05:41 | Apply, and what happens is I get
this view where I get some options.
| | 05:45 | It lists which posts I want to bulk edit.
| | 05:48 | I'm now allowed to add
Categories to all of them.
| | 05:51 | I can add Tags if I want to, I can
change the author, set the Comments to
| | 05:56 | Allow, set the Status to Published, and
then click Update, and now in one quick
| | 06:03 | swoop I published all these three
posts without ever actually going into the
| | 06:07 | Post Editor, and just like that I can also go
in and unpublish them again if I don't want them.
| | 06:13 | Publishing your post is the final
crucial step in web publishing process, and
| | 06:17 | just like with everything else,
WordPress makes every effort to make it as
| | 06:21 | flexible and easy as possible for you,
whether you want to publish your post
| | 06:25 | right away or schedule it for the future.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Creating PagesCreating a basic page| 00:00 | WordPress produces two main types of
content, Posts and Pages, and while they
| | 00:06 | display differently on the web and
have different attributes, in the back end
| | 00:10 | they're not all that different.
| | 00:12 | So far in the course, we've been
working exclusively with posts, which are the
| | 00:15 | main focus of most WordPress-powered sites.
| | 00:19 | Now we're going to take at the Pages, which
are also important components in a good website.
| | 00:24 | A good place to start is
by updating your About page.
| | 00:28 | You may have noticed that throughout
the course I've had this yellow warning at
| | 00:31 | the top of my Dashboard that says,
| | 00:34 | Tip: Update your about page so your
readers can learn a bit about you.
| | 00:37 | This is a good place to start,
because the About page is already built.
| | 00:40 | When you make a new WordPress site, you
always get three components built in,
| | 00:45 | A post called Hello world with one
comment in it, and also a page called About.
| | 00:50 | So we're going to edit the About page first.
| | 00:52 | To get to the About page, I can either
click on this link here that'll take me
| | 00:56 | to the About page or I can go down
here to Pages and click All Pages and here
| | 01:02 | you see the About page, and
I can click on it to open it.
| | 01:05 | When we were inside the Edit Page View,
you'll notice that it's not all that
| | 01:09 | different from the Edit Post View.
| | 01:11 | You have the same Title field, you
have the same Content field with the same
| | 01:14 | tools, and when you scroll down, you
also have the Writing Helper and Sharing.
| | 01:20 | On the side here, you now only have
the Publish panel and Page Attributes.
| | 01:24 | So the main difference between the pages and
the posts is how they relate to each other.
| | 01:29 | Now remember in the Post View, you have
Categories and Tags and all these other
| | 01:33 | fields that are not present here,
because the pages are static pages.
| | 01:37 | They don't have the same
relational qualities as posts do.
| | 01:41 | Editing a page is the same as editing a post.
| | 01:44 | You simply go in and change some text
around or add images or do whatever you want.
| | 01:48 | In my case, I'm going to grab some
contents off a Word document and put it in
| | 01:52 | here in place of the standard text.
| | 01:54 | So I'll go to my Word document and copy
it all out and the delete what's there,
| | 02:00 | use the Paste as Plain Text
function, and paste it in.
| | 02:04 | Now I need to do some editing.
| | 02:06 | So I'm going to change the Title here.
| | 02:08 | If you look at the Word document,
you see we have two subtitles.
| | 02:11 | So I'll change both of them into H2s,
so they're subtitles, and then I'm just
| | 02:18 | going to clean up the lines here.
| | 02:21 | Finally, I want to add an image to this page.
| | 02:24 | So I'm going to go to Add Media and Select
Files and find an image that I want to use.
| | 02:33 | I'll make sure that the Title
and the Alternate Text is there.
| | 02:36 | So I'll change this too.
I'll leave the Caption blank.
| | 02:43 | Take away the Link URL, position it Center
and Full Size, and click Insert into Posts.
| | 02:50 | Now the image appears at the bottom of
the post, but I want it to be at the top.
| | 02:53 | So I'm going to slide it up here, grab
the image, and pull it all the way to the
| | 02:57 | top, like that, and then
we're good to go. Well almost.
| | 03:02 | I'm going to do one more thing,
because in my Comp here, it says About Us,
| | 03:07 | whereas the page's name is just About.
| | 03:09 | So I'm going to change the Title to About Us.
| | 03:12 | Now here's something important.
| | 03:14 | You notice directly under the Title, you
have this field that says Permalink and
| | 03:17 | then it says your Web address (dot) WordPress.com/
and something else.
| | 03:22 | What happens is, when you create a new
page, WordPress will automatically create
| | 03:26 | a Permalink or permanent link to that
page, and it usually grabs the name of the
| | 03:32 | page when you originally
entered it as the Permalink.
| | 03:35 | So even though the page now is called
About Us, the Permalink just says About,
| | 03:40 | because originally when
it was made, it said About.
| | 03:43 | However, if I want to change it, I can edit it.
| | 03:46 | So I can go in and click Edit, and
then I get the ability to edit it.
| | 03:49 | It's important to remember though,
that you can't have spaces in a URL.
| | 03:53 | You have to put something in.
| | 03:54 | So the standard here is, if you want
to say About Us and its two words, you
| | 03:59 | change it to About-Us.
| | 04:02 | That way you can still read it as
two words, but it's connected with
| | 04:05 | something other than a space.
| | 04:07 | Click OK and the link is changed.
| | 04:09 | Now I'm done editing the page and
all that's left is to update it.
| | 04:13 | So I'll click Update.
| | 04:15 | The proofreader complains about my
language again, which I think is fine.
| | 04:21 | The page is saved, and now I can click View
page to see it on my website, and here it is.
| | 04:32 | Now to see the full difference between a
page and a post, let's also open a post.
| | 04:36 | So I'll go to the Homepage and select a post.
| | 04:40 | So I'll select this one, and here you
see that in the post, first of all, we
| | 04:46 | have navigation to the previous and next posts.
| | 04:50 | We have a display of the date, how many
comments are in here, and down here we
| | 04:55 | have tags, categories and so on.
| | 04:57 | Whereas on the page, all we have is the
page title, no navigation at the top, and
| | 05:03 | no tags or categories at the bottom.
| | 05:06 | So, very different type of content,
but it's built in the same way.
| | 05:09 | There's one more thing worth noting.
| | 05:11 | Notice at the very top here where we
have our main menu, it says Home, which
| | 05:15 | leads us back to the Homepage, and then
it also says About Us, which is the link
| | 05:19 | directly to this page.
| | 05:21 | That's important to know, because
whenever you create a new page, as long as
| | 05:25 | the default menu is activated inside
WordPress, the new page will appear on the menu.
| | 05:30 | So that means as we add more pages,
those pages will start stacking next to the
| | 05:35 | About Us page on this main menu.
| | 05:37 | And, if we create sub-pages, those sub-pages
will appear as dropdown items in the Main menu.
| | 05:44 | And just like with posts, if you want to
create a new page, you can either click
| | 05:48 | the Add New button up here, if you're
already in the Edit Page View, or you can
| | 05:52 | go to Pages and select Add New, or
copy a page if you want to start from an
| | 05:58 | existing page, or you can go to your
site name on the WordPress.com toolbar,
| | 06:03 | select New, and select Page.
| | 06:05 | They all take you to the same
place, the Add New Page Editor.
| | 06:09 | As you can see, writing a basic page
in WordPress is not all that different
| | 06:13 | from writing a post.
| | 06:15 | The main differences are in the way
WordPress handles pages and the extended
| | 06:19 | options attached to the main content.
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| Organizing page hierarchy| 00:00 | Whereas the posts in WordPress have
categories and tags to create taxonomies or
| | 00:05 | organizing or sorting, pages are
ordered in a basic parent-child system.
| | 00:10 | Any page can be the parents of any
other page, and children of pages can have
| | 00:15 | children of their own.
| | 00:16 | This makes it easy to create logical
relationships between different pages.
| | 00:21 | The parent-child relationship is
also reflected in the URL of the pages.
| | 00:25 | So far we've created one page found
under Pages and All Pages called About Us.
| | 00:31 | Now I want to create an additional page
that's going to live as a child of this About page.
| | 00:36 | It's going to be about being
able to volunteer for the gallery.
| | 00:39 | So, I'll start by creating a New page
and then I'll simply call it Volunteer
| | 00:46 | and then I'll go to my Word document
and pick up the text I need. So copy that,
| | 00:51 | Paste as Plain Text, clean it up a
bit, Insert it, do some more cleaning, and
| | 01:00 | I'll even change this heading here to
an H2, and now I've created the content I
| | 01:07 | want for this page.
| | 01:08 | However, I want this page not to be a
page that's stands on its own, but to be a
| | 01:12 | child of the About page, so that it
appears as related to the About page.
| | 01:17 | To do that I'm going to go over here
to Page Attributes on the right and used
| | 01:22 | the Parent drop down to
select the About Us page.
| | 01:26 | What happens now is I've told
WordPress that this current page, the Volunteer
| | 01:30 | page is the child of the About Us page.
| | 01:33 | And when I click Publish and go
past the spellchecker, you'll see
| | 01:39 | something interesting happen.
| | 01:41 | Notice how this URL changed, before it
said samocannews.wordpress.com/volunteer,
| | 01:47 | but now, because this is a child of
the About Us page, it says about us first
| | 01:53 | before it says volunteer.
| | 01:55 | If I go and View this page,
you'll also notice something else.
| | 01:59 | Although we added a new page that
page did not appear on the main menu.
| | 02:03 | Well, actually it did appear on the
main menu, but because it's a child of the
| | 02:07 | About Us page it only appears if you go
to the About Us item, then it appears as
| | 02:13 | a sub item under About Us.
| | 02:15 | To further see that this is a child page,
you can go back into our page editor,
| | 02:19 | so we'll go back to the Dashboard and go
to Pages and All Pages, and here you see
| | 02:24 | that, because the Volunteer page is a
child of the About Us page it appears with
| | 02:28 | a little dash (-) next to it, directly
under About Us, so you can clearly see
| | 02:32 | the parent-child relationship right here.
| | 02:35 | If you want to change the parent-child
relationship at any time, you can either
| | 02:38 | do it inside the full-page editor or
you can go to Quick Edit for the page and
| | 02:43 | here you find parent right here in the
Quick Editor and you can drop it down and
| | 02:48 | say Main Page, Update it.
| | 02:51 | The dash disappears, so it's no
longer a child, and if we reload the page,
| | 02:56 | you'll see that now Volunteer appears
as its own menu item. But I want this to
| | 03:01 | be a child page, so I'll go back again,
Quick Edit, Parent>About Us, Update.
| | 03:09 | Now the dash doesn't always kick in, so
you may have to reload this page to see
| | 03:13 | it, but now the Volunteer page is back
to being a child and on the page itself
| | 03:20 | the drop down kicks in again.
| | 03:22 | So, as you can see, creating
logical structures for your pages using
| | 03:26 | parent-child relationships can make it
easier for your visitors to navigate your
| | 03:29 | content and it's also very easy to do
for you, and just like with everything
| | 03:34 | else in WordPress, you can always
change it later if you don't like it.
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| Creating a contact page with a contact form| 00:00 | One of the great things about websites
is that people can interact with them.
| | 00:04 | Therefore, you can use it to gather
information from, and to communicate with, your readers.
| | 00:10 | One common way of starting such
communication is through a simple contact form.
| | 00:15 | Contact forms used to be rather
complicated to build, especially on
| | 00:18 | wordpress.com since you can't add a form plugin.
| | 00:21 | To remedy this, wordpress.com now comes
with a custom form creation tool you can
| | 00:26 | use to create basic forms.
| | 00:28 | To add a form to our website we are
going to create a New page that works as a
| | 00:33 | contact page, so I'll call it Contact
us and on this page I'll save all the
| | 00:38 | contact information I want about myself.
| | 00:40 | I like to make contact pages on all
the websites I build, because when people
| | 00:45 | visit websites, they have a tendency
of wanting to get in touch with the
| | 00:48 | people behind the website, and unless
you make a dedicated page to it, they'll
| | 00:52 | have to kind of scour through all the
content to try to figure out where the
| | 00:56 | contact information is.
| | 00:57 | It's very smart to have a separate
contact page, so people have an easy time
| | 01:02 | finding the contact
information they are looking for.
| | 01:04 | And that's what we are going to do here.
| | 01:05 | So first, I am going to add some
regular text information with some contact
| | 01:09 | information. I'll get that from my Word
document here and I'll use the Paste as
| | 01:16 | Plain Text function to paste it in, do
some small cleanup here, and Insert it.
| | 01:24 | Now I have the general contact
information for this company.
| | 01:28 | And I will make this into an H2 and
then I can write some more text down here.
| | 01:37 | So I'll put a little heading down here
telling people there is a contact form
| | 01:41 | there and then I'll say, Fill out
the contact form below and we'll get in
| | 01:49 | touch with you shortly.
| | 01:52 | Now I am going to add a form to this page.
| | 01:55 | Now there are two main reasons why you
want to create a contact form rather than
| | 01:59 | leaving your e-mail address in the post.
| | 02:02 | The first one is that if you just leave
your e-mail address, people have to boot
| | 02:05 | up their e-mail program and then paste
in your e-mail address and write a subject
| | 02:10 | line and then write you a
e-mail and then send it out.
| | 02:13 | Whereas, if you put a contact form in,
all they have to do is fill out the form,
| | 02:17 | click Send and it's done.
| | 02:18 | The second reason is actually more important.
| | 02:21 | If you leave your e-mail address
anywhere on the Internet so it's visible,
| | 02:24 | evil bots that are on the Internet will
literally come find your e-mail address,
| | 02:29 | put your e-mail address on a list,
and then start sending you e-mails with
| | 02:33 | advertising for Free Ink or
all sorts of strange things.
| | 02:37 | You don't want that, so it's never a
good idea to leave your e-mail address out
| | 02:41 | in the open, a contact form works much better.
| | 02:44 | So now I am going to add the contact
form to this page. I have my cursor where I
| | 02:48 | want the contact form to appear.
| | 02:49 | So I am going to go up here and next
to the Add Media button and the Add Poll
| | 02:54 | button, there is another
button that says Add a custom form.
| | 02:57 | So I'll click that button
and I get the Form builder.
| | 03:01 | From here I can create a custom
form or I can just use the default one.
| | 03:06 | The default form has Name, Email,
Website and Comment and I can then choose to
| | 03:11 | either edit the content that's already
here or take some of it out or move it
| | 03:16 | around or add new fields.
| | 03:18 | So first I am going to edit a couple of
these fields, so I'll click on Edit and
| | 03:22 | change it to Your name, save it, then
I'll change it to Your email, because I
| | 03:29 | like it to be more personal, save that.
And I'll call this one Your website or
| | 03:38 | blog, save that and then I want to
add a new field, so I'll click Add a new
| | 03:43 | field and I'll call this field Your
telephone number and I'll spell it correctly,
| | 03:50 | too, and I'll make this
Required and I'll save that field.
| | 03:54 | And then I want to move this field, so
I'll hover my mouse over Move and then
| | 03:58 | pull it up and move it where I want it.
| | 04:01 | So now we have Your name, Your email
address, Your phone number, website or
| | 04:05 | blog and your Comment.
| | 04:08 | Now all I have to do is set it up so
that I actually get the e-mails that are
| | 04:11 | generated from this form.
| | 04:13 | So I'll go to Email notifications here and
then I'll type in the e-mail address I want.
| | 04:18 | Now if you don't put in an e-mail address,
it will automatically send the e-mails
| | 04:22 | to the default e-mail address of your site.
| | 04:25 | So basically the e-mail address
you used to set up this account.
| | 04:28 | But you can put in any e-mail address you want.
| | 04:30 | I am just going to put in info@samoca.org,
and the subject line should be
| | 04:36 | something that is easy to identify.
| | 04:38 | So I'll call it, Generated from
samocanews.wordpress.org form, and then I'll go
| | 04:50 | back to the Form builder just make
sure that what I have here is correct and
| | 04:54 | I'll click Add this form to my post.
| | 04:58 | And then the form gets added to the post.
| | 04:59 | Well I know, it doesn't actually look
like a form here, this is in fact a bunch
| | 05:04 | of what's called short codes, you
recognize short codes because they have a
| | 05:08 | square bracket at the front and back,
and then they have the name of the short
| | 05:12 | code here and then whatever it does.
| | 05:14 | And these forms are actually a bunch of
different short codes stacked together
| | 05:18 | to create a contact form.
| | 05:20 | So it doesn't look like much in the
editor, but when I Publish this page, and
| | 05:28 | then go View it, you'll see that here
we have the information, so Contact us,
| | 05:33 | Visit Us in Ventura, Contact us
directly through our contact form, and here we
| | 05:37 | have the contact form, so now I can fill it out.
| | 05:39 | So I'll say Morten, my e-mail address is
mor10@something.com, it's not actually
| | 05:47 | that, but you know I just made it up.
My phone number 8885555555 and then I'll
| | 05:53 | put in my web address and leave a Comment.
| | 05:57 | I have excellent grammar.
| | 05:58 | So now that I've filled out the form,
I can click Submit and you might wonder
| | 06:02 | why am I sending a form entry to myself?
| | 06:05 | Well, I need to make sure it works.
| | 06:06 | So now if everything works, this
message should have been sent to my e-mail
| | 06:11 | address and if I go to my e-mail, here it is.
| | 06:13 | And you see it's from Morten,
because that's what I entered, and it says
| | 06:17 | Generated from samocanews.wordpress.org
and when I open it, you get the full message.
| | 06:24 | Your name, Your email, Your website,
the Comment, the phone number, when it was
| | 06:29 | entered and even what IP address it came from.
| | 06:34 | Adding a contact form on your site
makes it easy for your visitors to get in
| | 06:37 | touch with you without you in the
process having to give away your e-mail
| | 06:40 | address to everybody.
| | 06:42 | And with the forms feature in WordPress.com,
you can add as many forms as you
| | 06:46 | like on any page or post and
customize them to your liking.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. The Appearance TabSelecting a theme| 00:00 | One of the powers of WordPress, and
probably one of the reasons why WordPress
| | 00:04 | is so popular, is that it provides an almost
perfect separation between Style and Content.
| | 00:10 | By that I mean all the content you
create on the WordPress.com, whether it
| | 00:14 | be Posts, Pages, Text, Images, Video,
or anything else, are completely
| | 00:19 | separate from the Style.
| | 00:20 | So you can change the way your Site
looks without having to manage your content
| | 00:25 | and change anything in your content.
| | 00:27 | Is all managed through what's called themes.
| | 00:30 | Themes are the masks that you put on
top of your content to decide what the
| | 00:35 | content is going to display like.
| | 00:37 | If you follow this course from the
start you may have noticed that your website
| | 00:41 | looks dramatically different from mine.
| | 00:43 | But the reality is it's not actually
different, it's just using a different theme.
| | 00:47 | That's because wordpress.com tends to
assign new websites random themes or you
| | 00:53 | may have been asked to
pick a theme in the beginning.
| | 00:55 | I was assigned this theme at random and I
might like it or I might not, but now I
| | 01:00 | want to see what else is out there,
because we can switch the themes of our
| | 01:04 | websites at any time.
| | 01:05 | So the first thing I want to do is
see what theme I am currently using.
| | 01:09 | So I'll hover up here to my Toolbar and
to SAMOCA News which is my website name.
| | 01:14 | And at the bottom here you'll see as
a Theme Wu Wie, so that's the theme
| | 01:19 | I'm currently using.
| | 01:20 | If I click on that link, I jump to the
Theme Showcase and the page for the theme
| | 01:25 | I am currently using.
| | 01:26 | Here you can either activate a theme
or you can See it in action or you can
| | 01:30 | navigate to other similar themes, you
will notice out this looks like WordPress
| | 01:34 | a lot, it has some
Categories and Tags and everything.
| | 01:38 | So what I want I do now is
find another theme that I can use.
| | 01:41 | So I am going to click on Explore
the Themes and from here I can start to
| | 01:45 | navigate all the themes are
available to me on WordPress.com.
| | 01:49 | So I can either just surf randomly
through this and see if I see anything I'd
| | 01:53 | like, and then if I find something I like,
like this Imbalance 2, I can click on
| | 01:58 | it to go to the theme page.
| | 02:01 | From here I can get a Preview, so I
can click See it in action and then I get
| | 02:05 | the live preview of what this theme
will actually look like in real life.
| | 02:10 | And after testing it I decide, I
really like it, so I'll go back to the tab
| | 02:16 | and that I than I can either click Activate
here or I can go to my actual blog and activate it.
| | 02:21 | So what I am going to do is first
activate it here, so you can see what happens.
| | 02:25 | When I click Activate, I jump straight
to my Theme Manager inside my Dashboard
| | 02:31 | and as you can see I have Imbalance 2
actived now. If I go Visit my site, you'll
| | 02:37 | see that SAMOCA News all of a
sudden looks completely different.
| | 02:42 | It also doesn't look very good.
| | 02:44 | So this clearly not the theme I want
to use, at least not out of the box.
| | 02:47 | So I am going to back to Manage Themes,
this time Inside my Dashboard, and
| | 02:54 | find another theme.
| | 02:55 | Now if you're in the Dashboard, I'll
show you how to get back to the Themes.
| | 02:59 | Under the Dashboard you'll find the
themes under Appearance and Themes.
| | 03:04 | When you go to Manage Themes page,
you'll see the current theme, and you'll also
| | 03:08 | see all the themes that are available to you.
| | 03:11 | And there are thousands of themes available,
most of them are free, some of them are for pay.
| | 03:15 | If they are for pay, you'll see a little
flag here that says how much they cost.
| | 03:19 | See this one, Funky, it's
Premium and it costs $100.
| | 03:21 | So what I want to do now, is activate
one of the Default Themes and instead of
| | 03:26 | browsing for it, I am going to search
for it. Since I already know the name, I
| | 03:30 | am going to go and search for twenty eleven.
| | 03:34 | Now this the default theme that
currently ships with WordPress, and it's
| | 03:37 | a great theme to start with, because
it has all the advanced features of
| | 03:41 | WordPress, and it gives you a good gauge
on how you can use themes in the future.
| | 03:45 | So I'll go down here and check out
Twenty Eleven, and you should do this with me.
| | 03:50 | When I have Twenty Eleven
visible, I can then do three things.
| | 03:53 | I can either Activate it right away, I
can Preview it, or I can view Details.
| | 03:57 | If I scroll down a bit more you'll see,
if I can click Details, I'll get all the
| | 04:01 | details about this theme.
| | 04:02 | I read the information and see all the
Tags that are attached and I can even
| | 04:07 | Preview the theme on my site.
| | 04:10 | So I see what it'll actually look like.
And you see it's quite different from
| | 04:14 | what we had and it seems to format
better than the other one that I was testing,
| | 04:17 | at least out-of-the-box.
| | 04:19 | So if I like this, I can either
Activate this theme by clicking Active Twenty
| | 04:25 | Eleven up here in the right top corner,
or I can close the Preview window and
| | 04:30 | then click Activate down here.
| | 04:33 | Now Twenty Eleven is activated and if
I go back to SAMOCA News and Reload the
| | 04:38 | page, you'll see we now have the
Twenty Eleven Theme here at the top.
| | 04:42 | The Twenty Eleven Themes is in
many ways a Standard WordPress Theme.
| | 04:46 | It has the Standard layout with title
of the page at the top, a Menu, a Search
| | 04:51 | box, and then the Standard Sidebar.
| | 04:54 | It might seem a little boring, but the
reality is when you're starting to work
| | 04:57 | with WordPress, it's a good idea to
start with something that's really
| | 05:00 | established and stable, so you
understand how everything works.
| | 05:04 | And Twenty Eleven is a great place to
start, because it has all the features you
| | 05:08 | need and we can really take this theme
a long way and customize it to a great
| | 05:13 | degree without really
having to do anything advanced.
| | 05:16 | Themes control what your
WordPress site looks like.
| | 05:19 | So when you want to change the
appearance of your site, the first step is
| | 05:22 | usually to change the theme.
| | 05:24 | There are hundreds of themes available
and more are coming all the time, there
| | 05:27 | is an endless variety to choose from.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using page templates| 00:00 | One of the things that sets a Page
apart from a Post is the ability to
| | 00:04 | natively change the template of certain pages to
make them look different from the rest of them.
| | 00:08 | Earlier in the course we created pages
for our site. And now that we're using the
| | 00:12 | Twenty Eleven theme that ships with page templates,
we can start using the Page Templates
| | 00:18 | to change the appearance of our pages.
| | 00:20 | You'll notice that with the Twenty Eleven theme
the front page has a sidebar. But if you
| | 00:26 | go to a single post the sidebar does
appears and the content appears in the
| | 00:31 | middle, the same goes for the pages.
| | 00:33 | So if you go to About Us page, you'll
see that again we have the content in the
| | 00:37 | middle and no sidebar.
| | 00:39 | What if I want to add a sidebar to it?
| | 00:40 | Well, with a Twenty Eleven theme I can add a
sidebar to it, because there's a special
| | 00:45 | page template that also has a sidebar.
| | 00:48 | So I can go to my Dashboard and go to
Pages>All Pages, and then I can assign a
| | 00:54 | page template to one of my pages.
| | 00:56 | So let's say I want to add the
sidebar to the About Us page.
| | 01:00 | First, I'll go to the About Us
page editor and show you where it is.
| | 01:04 | So here, we now in the Page
Attributes have a new box called Template.
| | 01:10 | This will only appear if your
theme supports Page Templates.
| | 01:13 | If your theme doesn't have Page
Templates, then you won't see this field.
| | 01:17 | But since Twenty Eleven has page
templates, I now have this option.
| | 01:20 | Under Template, I can now drop it
down and choose Sidebar Template.
| | 01:24 | When I Update the page and click past
the spell-check and then reload my page,
| | 01:31 | you'll see that the page has now has a sidebar.
| | 01:33 | It's the same sidebar as the front page
and it gives us a different look on this
| | 01:38 | page from any of the other pages.
| | 01:39 | For instance, if I go out to the Contact
Us page, you'll see there's no sidebar.
| | 01:45 | You can also manage the Page
Templates using Quick Edit.
| | 01:48 | So if you go back to All Pages and
hover over About Us, you can select Quick
| | 01:54 | Edit, and then here you'll see Template,
and you can drop it down and change it
| | 01:58 | back to Default Template.
| | 02:00 | Update, the page is updated, then I can go back
and now the page doesn't have a sidebar again.
| | 02:07 | Changing the Page Template is an easy
but important trick that can help you
| | 02:11 | visually, identify certain page
content as different from other page content.
| | 02:16 | That said, Page Templates are theme-
dependent, so there's no guarantee you'll
| | 02:20 | find a layout you like.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using widgets| 00:00 | Depending on what theme you're
running, you will have so called Widgetized
| | 00:04 | areas in different places and in these
widgetized areas you can place widgets.
| | 00:10 | Widgets are small little programs that
run inside your site and you can usually
| | 00:14 | see them inside sidebars.
| | 00:15 | Like for instance, here in the
Twenty Eleven theme, I have widgets in my
| | 00:19 | sidebar, and I could also have
widgets in my footer, if I wanted to.
| | 00:23 | These widgets are things like a list of
Recent Posts, Recent Comments, list of
| | 00:27 | Categories and other functions.
| | 00:29 | To manage these, we're going to the
Dashboard and then go under Appearance and Widgets.
| | 00:35 | From here we get to the Widgets' Manager.
| | 00:37 | The Widgets' Manager page has three sections.
| | 00:41 | The available widgets at the top here,
which lists all available Widgets.
| | 00:45 | The Inactive Widgets down here, where
you would place widgets that you have
| | 00:49 | previously configured, but then decided
not to use, but you want to save them.
| | 00:53 | And finally on the right, the Widgetized Areas.
| | 00:56 | And as you can see, the Twenty
Eleven theme has 5 widgetized areas.
| | 01:01 | The Main Sidebar, which is what you saw earlier.
| | 01:04 | A Showcase Sidebar and three Footer Areas.
| | 01:07 | Each of these can contain as
many or as few widgets as you like.
| | 01:11 | And many of them will simply collapse
if you don't put any widgets into them.
| | 01:15 | As you can see, the Main Sidebar Area
already has five widgets, the Meta Widget,
| | 01:19 | the Archives, the Categories,
Recent Posts and Recent Comments.
| | 01:23 | And each of these have settings, so if
you click on the Down arrow, you can see
| | 01:27 | they expand, and you can see all the
settings that are inside each of them.
| | 01:30 | Most Widgets will have the Default Settings.
| | 01:32 | So for example, the Recent
Comments widget has a Standard Title.
| | 01:37 | So if you go look at the site, you'll
see it says Recent Comments here, and that
| | 01:41 | will only change if you go in and
change it. So if I simply change it to
| | 01:44 | Comments and click Save and Reload the
page, the title changed to just Comments.
| | 01:54 | Likewise, I can also do things like
change the avatar background color to black,
| | 01:58 | so I'll just say, because that's the
background color of black and save it
| | 02:03 | again, then I can Reload it and you'll
see that we get a black stripe at the
| | 02:07 | bottom here and you can do other configurations.
| | 02:12 | If you don't want a widget to appear,
you can simply grab it and pull it out of
| | 02:16 | the widgetized area.
| | 02:17 | So if I don't want the Archives and
the Meta to appear in my sidebar, I'll
| | 02:21 | simply grab Archives and pull it
out and grab Meta and pull it out.
| | 02:26 | Now notice, even though I didn't do
any saving, I can go back to my Page, as
| | 02:30 | you can see right now we've Archives
and Meta, but when I Reload the page,
| | 02:36 | Archives and Meta are gone.
| | 02:38 | That's because this Page, the
Widget Page is completely interactive.
| | 02:42 | When you drag and drop stuff in,
it automatically gets saved.
| | 02:45 | The only time you ever have to click
Save buttons is if you go in and configure
| | 02:49 | information in an individual widget,
like changing the title or changing the
| | 02:53 | number of posts to show or something like that.
| | 02:56 | The same goes for when I
want to Add New Widgets.
| | 02:59 | Let's say I want to Add a New
Widget to my Main Sidebar Area.
| | 03:01 | I'll scroll down and find the widget I want.
| | 03:04 | I want the top Posts and Pages widget.
So I'll grab that, scroll up and drop it
| | 03:10 | in, so I'll put that up to the very top.
| | 03:12 | And here I can make changes if I want to,
it already says Top Posts and Pages,
| | 03:17 | and it'll show 10, and I'm fine with that.
| | 03:19 | So then I'll leave it alone
and just go and Reload the page.
| | 03:23 | And at the very top here we now
have Top Posts and Pages listed.
| | 03:29 | If you want to configure one of the
other widgetized areas, you can simply
| | 03:32 | collapse this one and then
open one of the other ones.
| | 03:35 | Let's say I want to add something to
the Footer. Now just to show you, if I
| | 03:38 | scroll down to the bottom here,
we've a Footer area that has no widgets.
| | 03:43 | But, if I go add something into it,
let's say I want to add the Archives to the
| | 03:48 | Footer Area 1, and then Relaod the page
again, you'll see that the Archives now
| | 03:53 | appears down here, along
with the rest of the Footer.
| | 03:57 | And I can add one for each of the Footer Areas.
| | 04:00 | So I'll Add the Author Grid here, and
then I'll add A Follow Box down here and
| | 04:10 | Reload the page again and you'll see
now we have three different widgets, in
| | 04:15 | three different widgetized areas.
| | 04:17 | Now here's an important point,
WordPress recently made a change that make the
| | 04:21 | front page of any WordPress.com blog
into an infinitely scrolling front page,
| | 04:27 | which means, as you scroll down, as long
as there are more Posts, they will just
| | 04:31 | keep loading on the bottom and
you'll never get to the Footer.
| | 04:34 | There is a lot of controversy around
this, but it basically means that if
| | 04:38 | you add Footer the widgets, don't expect
people to see the Footer widgets on the front page.
| | 04:43 | They will still see them on the single Pages
and the single Posts, just not on the Front page.
| | 04:50 | There are a lot of really cool widgets in
here, and some of them are also rather useless.
| | 04:55 | In my opinion, a lot of these really
shouldn't be there, but that is my opinion.
| | 04:59 | I encourage you to try out some of
these different widgets and see what they
| | 05:02 | do, and place them in different places
on your site and try to configure in a
| | 05:06 | way that works for you.
| | 05:07 | Because they are a lot of fun.
Unfortunately, under WordPress.com, you're not
| | 05:12 | able to add new widgets.
| | 05:13 | So if you go to a website that has some
really cool feature in the sidebar and
| | 05:17 | you can't find it in the current
widgets area, it's not available to you, it's
| | 05:22 | only available to people who
have self-hosted wordPress sites.
| | 05:25 | But, that said, WordPress.com constantly
adds in new features into the widget section.
| | 05:31 | So you're likely to see popular
stuff appear here pretty soon.
| | 05:35 | Since there are so many widgets
available in WordPress.com, there's no time to go
| | 05:39 | through all of them.
| | 05:40 | But then the available widgets
are pretty much self-explanatory.
| | 05:43 | So once you know how to manage them,
you can experiment and come up with the
| | 05:46 | best configuration for
your own site on your own.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding advanced widget functions| 00:00 | Just like the Internet as a whole,
wordpress.com evolves at breakneck speed, and
| | 00:06 | by using wordpress.com, you have
direct access to the latest and greatest
| | 00:09 | WordPress has to offer.
| | 00:11 | Much of this is hidden
away in the Widget section.
| | 00:14 | By checking in on the widgets
regularly, you're likely to see new
| | 00:17 | functions added all the time.
| | 00:19 | Let's take a look at some of the
more advanced widgets and how they work.
| | 00:22 | I am going to focus on four main widgets;
| | 00:25 | the Image widget, the Flickr widget, the
Facebook Like box and the Twitter widget.
| | 00:31 | Let's start with the Image widget.
| | 00:33 | Let's say I want to add a button on my
site for something, like Follow me on Twitter.
| | 00:38 | Well, I have an image for it and I want
to make that image clickable and I want
| | 00:42 | to put it in my sidebar.
| | 00:44 | Previously, the way you would do that is
you would get a text widget and then you
| | 00:48 | would put all the HTML code in to
make that image appear, but now there's a
| | 00:52 | widget for just that, for adding images.
| | 00:55 | So we can go into our Widget area and
if you're not already there, it would be
| | 00:59 | under the Dashboard, under Appearance
and Widgets, and then we can scroll down
| | 01:04 | and you'll find Image.
| | 01:05 | You can scroll up again and we'll drop
this at the very top and here you get all
| | 01:10 | the fields you need to fill out.
| | 01:11 | First you have to add a Widget title,
only if you want to use it though, and
| | 01:15 | in my case, I don't want to use a
Widget title, so I am going to leave that one alone.
| | 01:19 | The next one is a bit more tricky.
| | 01:21 | I need to add an Image URL.
| | 01:23 | Now here is the thing.
| | 01:24 | The widget doesn't allow me to
upload an image directly to WordPress.
| | 01:28 | I have to upload the image separately
and then get the URL to the image and
| | 01:32 | then paste it in here.
| | 01:34 | So what I am going to do, is I am going to
open a new window from the Media Library.
| | 01:38 | So I'll hover over Media, and click Add
New, and I'll open it in a new tab and
| | 01:44 | from here, I am going drop in a file.
| | 01:46 | Now I have cheated and already made
this file. It's a little SAMOCA logo with
| | 01:50 | Twitter on it. So I am going to grab
that and drop it in. And just like when you
| | 01:55 | add an image into your posts, when you
add an image into the Media Library, you
| | 02:00 | get to set the Title, the Alternate Text,
the Caption and all that information.
| | 02:04 | So I am just going to set the Title and
the Alternate Text to be the same, and
| | 02:08 | then I am going to grab the File URL
down here, copy the whole File URL and
| | 02:13 | click Save all changes.
| | 02:15 | Now the image appears here which means
it's in my Library. I can now close this
| | 02:19 | window and go back to my Widgets
and paste in the Image URL here.
| | 02:25 | So now the image lives on
wordpress.com and it's referenced here.
| | 02:28 | Then I can put in an Alternate Text
for my image, so I'll say Follow SAMOCA
| | 02:34 | on Twitter, and I can put in an Image
title if I want, the title should really
| | 02:39 | be the same at the Alternate Text in
this case. And if I wanted to, I could
| | 02:44 | also add a Caption.
| | 02:45 | But in this case, this is an image
I am going to be using as a button.
| | 02:48 | So I am not going to add a caption.
| | 02:50 | I'll leave the alignment as it is and I
won't set a Width and a Height, because
| | 02:54 | if I don't set anything, WordPress will
see what size that image is and fit it,
| | 02:59 | but that's because I know
that this image will fit.
| | 03:01 | If you have a larger image, you may
want to force that size so that it will
| | 03:05 | fit in your sidebar.
| | 03:06 | Finally, I need to add the Link URL.
| | 03:09 | So in this case I am going to add my
own Twitter handle, because SAMOCA doesn't
| | 03:12 | have one, so I'll say http://twitter.com/mor10,
and since I have added this Link
| | 03:22 | URL, it means that the image will appear,
and if someone clicks on it, they will
| | 03:26 | go to whatever website I put in as
the URL, in this case my Flickr account.
| | 03:32 | So now I'll save this,
since I made changes to it.
| | 03:36 | I'll go and reload my page and I'll
scroll down and you will see now we have
| | 03:40 | this nice SAMOCA ON Twitter logo and
if I click on it, I jump directly to
| | 03:46 | Twitter and my account. Cool, right?
| | 03:51 | So that's the Image widget.
| | 03:53 | The next one is the Flickr widget.
| | 03:55 | This is really popular.
| | 03:56 | A lot of people want to add like a
stack of photos from their Flickr
| | 03:59 | account into their sidebar.
| | 04:01 | So all you have to do is grab the
Flickr widget in the widgetized area here,
| | 04:06 | pull it up, dump it in and
then put in the Flickr RSS URL.
| | 04:10 | Now it's a little bit challenging to
find the Flickr RSS URL the first time,
| | 04:14 | so I will show you how to do that.
| | 04:15 | You go to Flickr and you find the
account you want. So flickr.com/mor10, for
| | 04:20 | instance, and then on the photostream
page. You see me in my Halloween costume.
| | 04:27 | You can scroll down to the bottom
and here you find Subscribe to Morten
| | 04:31 | Rand-Hendriksen's photostream - Latest,
and it's this Latest link you want.
| | 04:36 | So what I am going to do is right click
on the Latest link, Copy link address so
| | 04:40 | that I get the URL to that link and
then paste that link address in here, and
| | 04:45 | you see it ends with rss_200.
| | 04:48 | Now I can decide how many photos I would
like to display, so I am going to say I
| | 04:51 | wan to display 10 photos, and I
want to display the Thumbnail size.
| | 04:56 | All I now have to do is click Save,
and I'll navigate back to the page and
| | 05:03 | reload it, and here you have my
Flickr photos in the sidebar, neat!
| | 05:11 | So now we have an image and a Flickr photo.
| | 05:14 | The next one the list is the Facebook Like Box.
| | 05:17 | The Facebook Like Box is a fantastic tool
for getting people to follow you on Facebook.
| | 05:22 | If you have a blog, you should really
have a Facebook page associated with that
| | 05:26 | blog and what will happen is if you add
the Like Box to your blog, when people
| | 05:30 | are logged into Facebook and then go
to your blog, Facebook will notice that
| | 05:34 | they are logged in and will show a
little box with images of all of your friends
| | 05:39 | that are also following this page.
| | 05:40 | So it's a very good way of
marketing a page to someone else.
| | 05:44 | So what I am going to do here is not add
a title, but I will put in the Facebook
| | 05:49 | page URL for my company Facebook page, which is
| | 05:52 | http://facebook.com/pinkandyellowmedia.
| | 06:01 | Then I have to decide the Width of
the box, I am going to leave it at 200.
| | 06:05 | I can pick between a
Light and a Dark Color Scheme.
| | 06:08 | I am going to leave it at Light.
| | 06:09 | I can choose whether I
want to show the faces or not.
| | 06:11 | There is really no point unless you
show the faces, so leave that on, but you
| | 06:15 | can also show or hide the stream, and
I'd recommended leaving the stream off,
| | 06:19 | unless you constantly update your
Facebook page, and then I'll save it.
| | 06:24 | And then, when we go to the page again and
scroll down, you will see we now have a Like Box.
| | 06:31 | I am noticing now that this Like Box is
too wide, so I am going to go back and I
| | 06:35 | am going to change it so it's a little
narrower, I will set to 195 pixels maybe,
| | 06:41 | and save it again, reload the page,
still too wide, I am going to take it even
| | 06:48 | more down, let's say 180. And now it fits.
| | 06:57 | Because I added it in as a widget I can
also move it around. So let's say I want
| | 07:02 | the Like Box to appear above my Flickr
stream, I can simply go in, grab my Like
| | 07:07 | Box, pull it over the Flickr stream
and when I now reload my page again, it
| | 07:12 | appears above my Flickr stream.
| | 07:14 | It really is that quick and simple.
| | 07:16 | The last widget I want to
show you is the Twitter widget.
| | 07:18 | So I'll scroll down until I find Twitter,
here it is, scroll back up again and
| | 07:25 | I'll place it directly
under the Facebook Like Box.
| | 07:28 | Here I can simply put in my Twitter
handle, say how many tweets I want to show.
| | 07:33 | I can choose things like hide or
show replies, I can also Hide Tweets
| | 07:36 | Published by Publicize.
| | 07:37 | You will remember that Publicize is
the function that automatically publishes
| | 07:42 | your content onto Twitter, so that
might be a good idea. And you can include
| | 07:46 | things like retweet, and of
course, display a Follow Button.
| | 07:49 | I highly recommend you leave the
Display Follow Button checked, so people can
| | 07:53 | actually follow you.
| | 07:55 | When I save this and reload the page
the final time, you will see that we now
| | 08:02 | have my Twitter updates
right here in the sidebar.
| | 08:07 | Widgets are not meant to be the
focal point of your site, but rather
| | 08:10 | additional tools and info to help your user
find interesting information and related content.
| | 08:16 | By exploring the widgets available
and using them smartly, you can create a
| | 08:20 | customized and useful user experience
for all your visitors and keep them on
| | 08:24 | your site longer in the process.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating custom widgets using the Text Widget| 00:00 | In addition to the many special-purpose
widgets available in WordPress.com,
| | 00:05 | there is a general-use
widget called the Text widget.
| | 00:08 | This widget lets you set any title and
input a wide variety of content using
| | 00:12 | plain text or HTML code.
| | 00:15 | The Text widget is actually really
useful, if you want to put in information
| | 00:19 | into your sidebar or if you have
something that's written in HTML that you want
| | 00:23 | to add-on, it's really important though
that you know that the Text widget will
| | 00:27 | not be able to run JavaScript.
| | 00:30 | So, lot of these things, you find on the
Internet, these widgets that you can add
| | 00:33 | to your website, they are using
JavaScript to generate content and that just
| | 00:38 | will not work on WordPress.com, because
JavaScript has been blocked altogether.
| | 00:41 | But see how we can use Text widget
for something that will actually work.
| | 00:45 | If I scroll down to the bottom here, I
can find my Text widget and I'll add it in.
| | 00:52 | So, what I am going to do is at the
very top of my blog, I'm going to add a
| | 00:55 | little welcome note, so I'll say,
Welcome to SAMOCA News, and then below here I
| | 01:03 | can add in either straight text or even HTML.
| | 01:06 | Now like I said, you can use HTML here.
| | 01:09 | So, for example, I can make things
bold by putting in the strong tag and then
| | 01:16 | close the tag over here, or I can
italicize things by putting in the em tag, so
| | 01:23 | I will italicize this, and I can also
do things like add images and or other
| | 01:32 | stylistic elements.
| | 01:33 | If I want to, I can also add a second
paragraph just like I would in a text editor.
| | 01:38 | Now if I check this Automatically add
paragraphs box down here, this content
| | 01:43 | will be wrapped properly in paragraph
tags, when I save it. So I click Save,
| | 01:50 | and we'll go back and reload the page.
Then you see here that now we have that
| | 01:55 | new text I added, it says Welcome to
SAMOCA News and here we have the text.
| | 02:00 | It's regular text and then this is
italicized and awesome is bolded and we have
| | 02:05 | a second paragraph.
| | 02:07 | So, it's very easy to use the text
widget to add simple content, you can also go
| | 02:11 | a step further and start
adding things like links.
| | 02:13 | For example, we can link directly to
the Contact page or you can contact us by
| | 02:21 | following this link and filling out the
form and then I'll put in an anchor tag
| | 02:29 | here, so I'll say by following this link.
| | 02:32 | So, anchor href which, is the URL and
then I'll say I'll go here and grab the
| | 02:38 | URL, so hover over Contact us right
click Copy link address now paste that in
| | 02:45 | here, so there we have the link address.
I'll give the link a title and it is
| | 02:51 | Contact SAMOCA and I'll close the tag
and then I'll wrap it where I want the
| | 02:58 | link to end, /a, then end of the tag,
I'll Save this and reload the page and you
| | 03:06 | see now we even have a
link inside our Text widget.
| | 03:09 | So, if you know some basic HTML or if
you have an application that can help you
| | 03:14 | write basic HTML, you can actually put
some very interesting information into
| | 03:18 | your sidebar using the Text widget, and
you don't have to restrict yourself to
| | 03:22 | text only. Like I said, if you can
do it in HTML, you can add it here.
| | 03:27 | So you can add things like images or
maybe even a video, but you have to
| | 03:31 | remember you can't add JavaScript-based code.
| | 03:34 | So, for example, Google AdSense will
not work inside WordPress.com, so you
| | 03:38 | can't add an AdSense bar, this is
something a lot of people want to do and you
| | 03:42 | really can't do it.
| | 03:43 | WordPress has some alternatives to
AdSense, but AdSense, unfortunately, for
| | 03:47 | WordPress.com users is off the table.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating custom menus| 00:00 | Menus are a vital part of your website
because they are the tools used by your
| | 00:04 | visitors to access
different sections on your site.
| | 00:08 | WordPress let's you create custom
menus pointing to pretty much anything you
| | 00:11 | want both in the sidebar and in the
theme itself, if it's supported.
| | 00:16 | WordPress menus are controlled from a
simple user interface right inside the
| | 00:20 | Admin panel and are easy to manage
with simple drag-and-drop behaviors.
| | 00:24 | On the front page of the Twenty Eleven
theme you have a Menu, at the very top here.
| | 00:29 | This is the regular main menu
that you will see on most websites.
| | 00:33 | By default, the Main menu consists of
two types of items you have the Home
| | 00:38 | page and then you have a list of all
the other pages listed in alphabetical
| | 00:41 | order, and in the case of sub pages, or child
pages, they will appear under the parent page.
| | 00:48 | But what if you want to change
that menu into something else?
| | 00:51 | You want to configure it into a different
layout or you just want to reorganize it,
| | 00:54 | To do that you have to go to the
Dashboard and create a Custom menu.
| | 00:59 | So let's go to the Dashboard and
then go to Appearance and Menus.
| | 01:05 | This is where you can
create and configure new menus.
| | 01:08 | Off the top, when you don't have any menus
configured yet you have to create a new menu.
| | 01:14 | So I am going to create a new menu,
I'll just call this one main menu, and I
| | 01:18 | will click Create Menu.
| | 01:20 | This creates a menu I can now use.
| | 01:23 | So inside this menu, I can
add as many items as I want.
| | 01:26 | And I have some different options here.
| | 01:27 | Let me the first collapse this Theme
locations for now and then you can see.
| | 01:32 | I can either add custom links, I can
add pages, or I can add Categories.
| | 01:37 | That means, I can pretty much link to
any kind of section I want within the site
| | 01:41 | or even to sections outside the site.
| | 01:44 | You always want to start your main menu
with a Home link, but you'll notice that
| | 01:48 | you can't see the Home link anywhere here.
| | 01:50 | That's because it's hidden, you will find it
under View All under Pages. Here we have Home.
| | 01:55 | So let's start by just adding that one item.
| | 01:58 | So I will click on Home,
and then click Add to Menu.
| | 02:02 | And you'll see that now
Home appears in my Main Menu.
| | 02:05 | From here, I can drop it down to get
more information and now I can see both
| | 02:09 | the URL to that menu item, and I can see
the Navigation label and the Title Attribute.
| | 02:15 | Now the Title Attribute is actually
more important than people think and you
| | 02:18 | should always fill it in.
| | 02:19 | The Title Attribute is what appears
when you hover your mouse over a menu item
| | 02:24 | and it's also what is read by text-to-speech
browsers and search engines.
| | 02:28 | The reason why it matters is because a
link like Home appears on the Internet
| | 02:34 | probably about 500 gazillion times.
| | 02:37 | And search engines won't understand the
difference between one link called home
| | 02:41 | another link called home.
| | 02:43 | But if you give it a Title Attribute,
that's more specific, it's easy to understand.
| | 02:47 | For example, SAMOCA News Home Page,
much more descriptive and it took me about
| | 02:53 | two seconds to make.
| | 02:55 | Now that I've changed it, I should
really saved this menu before I move on so I
| | 02:59 | will click Save Menu.
| | 03:00 | And I know that my changes
have actually been saved.
| | 03:04 | And now I have a menu with one item in it,
and I can assign that menu to the front page.
| | 03:08 | So I am going to go to Theme
Locations here and assign it.
| | 03:12 | But before I do that, I am going to
open my website in a separate window so you
| | 03:15 | can see what I am talking about.
| | 03:17 | So right now, we have the default menu,
it has the Home button the About Us
| | 03:20 | button with the drop-down
and the Contact Us button.
| | 03:23 | If I go back to my menus, and I go under
Theme Locations and assign Main menu as
| | 03:31 | the primary menu and click Save and
then go back and reload my Front page.
| | 03:35 | You will see now we only have the Home
button because that's only item on my menu.
| | 03:41 | Now I can build my menu out, so I can
go down here and add the About Us in
| | 03:46 | Volunteer pages and the Contact Us pages.
| | 03:49 | Again, I will click Add to Menu, and
the menu items are added automatically.
| | 03:54 | Then, I can go in and edit them
and from here I can either change the
| | 03:58 | navigation label, because by default the
navigation label will match the name of
| | 04:02 | the page, but I may want to change
it to just Contact and then save Title
| | 04:06 | Attribute as Contact SAMOCA.
| | 04:10 | And then I am going to change About Us
and I will say About SAMOCA and I might
| | 04:17 | actually change the navigation to
just About and I will change Volunteer to
| | 04:25 | Volunteer for SAMOCA.
| | 04:31 | Now if I save this menu again, I am
saving all my changes and since the menu is
| | 04:36 | already assigned to be the primary menu,
when I go back to my front page and now
| | 04:42 | I have all those items.
| | 04:43 | The problem is right now they are in
the wrong order and also the Volunteer
| | 04:47 | doesn't appear under About.
| | 04:49 | So I can change that very quickly.
| | 04:52 | First, I want to change the order.
| | 04:53 | So I am going to go grab About and simply
pull it up to the position I want it to be in.
| | 04:58 | So now we have Home, About and Contact.
| | 05:01 | Then I am going to grab Volunteer and
pull it under About, and then to the side
| | 05:06 | so that it gets indented.
| | 05:07 | So now you can actually visually see
the hierarchy of this menu and if I save
| | 05:12 | this and reload it, I'm now back to the
same menu, I had before the Home button,
| | 05:20 | the About that drops down to
volunteer and the Contact button.
| | 05:24 | What's cool about the Custom menu is now
I can also add other types of links.
| | 05:28 | For example, I can add links to my Categories.
| | 05:31 | So if I want to have a link to the
category page, I simply click on News, Add to
| | 05:37 | menu, and then I get that link, so I can
that up here and then I will change the
| | 05:42 | Title Attribute to SAMOCA News Index
because this will be the index page that
| | 05:49 |
| | 05:50 | shows all the news items.
| | 05:52 | Again, I'll save the menu, reload the
page, and when I click on News we are
| | 05:59 | taken to the Category page that
shows all my news items but nothing else,
| | 06:04 | which can be very useful.
| | 06:06 | I can also create custom links that can
point to specific posts within my system
| | 06:11 | or to somewhere else.
| | 06:12 | Let's say, I want to create a link to Lynda.com.
| | 06:15 | I can then go into custom links, type in the
URL, so lynda.com/mor10 because that's me.
| | 06:23 | And then just say Lynda.com as the label.
| | 06:26 | I will click Add to menu, the item gets
added to the menu and then I can go in
| | 06:31 | here and change both the URL, the Label
and the Title Attribute and when I save
| | 06:38 | the menu and reload my page I now
have that link right on my Main menu.
| | 06:47 | Now you know how to create a menu and
how to assign it to specific theme location.
| | 06:51 | But you can use menus inside
WordPress to do other things as well.
| | 06:57 | So let's create another menu.
| | 06:58 | I will create a new menu, I call this
one Sidebar menu, click Create Menu.
| | 07:05 | Now let's put some different items in here.
| | 07:07 | Let's say, I want to make a list of
other news websites that I am interested in.
| | 07:11 | So I will go in and I will
say cnn.com, CNN, Add to Menu.
| | 07:18 | Go to CNN>Save Menu.
| | 07:22 | So now I have a sidebar menu, but of
course until I assign it, it won't appear
| | 07:28 | anywhere. Right now we still only have
our main menu and the sidebar menu is
| | 07:32 | nowhere to be found.
| | 07:33 | So what I need to do now
is go back into Widgets.
| | 07:37 | So I will go under Appearance and
Widgets and then I can find the Custom Menu
| | 07:43 | Widget, grab it, drop it directly
underneath my text widget, give it a title,
| | 07:51 | and then I can pick what menu I want to
display, in this case the Sidebar menu, click Save.
| | 07:56 | And when I reload the page, we now have
that NEW SITES menu displaying right here.
| | 08:02 | Now what you'll see here is my website
is going to suffer from what I like to
| | 08:06 | call sidebar overload, where there's
tons of stuff on the sidebar and it's
| | 08:10 | really getting distracting.
| | 08:12 | So I am going to do some
simple pruning of my sidebar here.
| | 08:15 | I am going to go and move my
Custom menu down to the footer.
| | 08:21 | So I will find Footer Area One and I
will grab my Custom Menu and scroll down,
| | 08:27 | and drop it here, then I am
going to get rid of my Flickr photos.
| | 08:31 | So I am first going to collapse
Available Widgets and grab Flickr photos and
| | 08:35 | put them over here.
| | 08:37 | And then I am just going to get rid of this
one and this one and this one and this one.
| | 08:50 | And now when I reload my page I will
notice that the sidebar is far less
| | 08:56 | cluttered and at the bottom of
my page I have a Custom menu.
| | 09:03 | As you can see, creating, deploying and
editing custom menus in WordPress is now
| | 09:07 | very simple, and more importantly
you can change your menus on the fly.
| | 09:11 | So if you need to link to a new page, a
particular category or even a page on a
| | 09:16 | different site or post within your site,
you can do so quickly and easily both
| | 09:21 | in the sidebar and in the Theme itself,
if the menu function is supporting.
| | 09:25 | Custom navigation has always been one
of top-most WordPress requests and now
| | 09:29 | it's available right at your fingertips.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Custom Design feature| 00:00 | WordPress.com comes with a set of
predefined themes and though these themes are
| | 00:05 | quite attractive and many of them are
customizable, you may want to make some
| | 00:09 | changes to them to make the site more your own.
| | 00:12 | One way of doing this is to purchase
to $30 a year Custom Design upgrade.
| | 00:17 | With a Custom Design upgrade you can
use fonts from Typekit to change the fonts
| | 00:21 | on your site and you can also create
and customize your own CSS to make the
| | 00:25 | theme more to your liking.
| | 00:27 | These are both advanced
options but here's a short primer.
| | 00:31 | To find the Custom Design feature, you
have to go to your Dashboard and then
| | 00:34 | navigate to Appearance and Custom Design.
| | 00:37 | From here you can do two things, you
can either add Custom Fonts or you
| | 00:42 | can add Custom CSS.
| | 00:43 | The cool thing is that you can try this
out in advance before you buy it because
| | 00:48 | as you can see the Upgrade is $30 per year.
| | 00:50 | So let's check out the Custom Fonts first.
| | 00:53 | When you click the Try it for free
button or you click Fonts up here, you
| | 00:58 | go to the Preview panel where you can see
what your site will look like with the new fonts.
| | 01:02 | I'm going to scroll down a bit here
and then you can see what happens.
| | 01:06 | From here depending on what theme you're
using you can change different fonts on your site.
| | 01:11 | In this case, I can change the Site
Title font, so I'll drop this down and
| | 01:16 | change it to this Brokenscript and
then I can increase the size and change the
| | 01:23 | style of it if I want to. Then I can
change the Heading style so I have to
| | 01:27 | scroll down a bit for that, so here we
have the heading and I can change that
| | 01:30 | style to something else.
| | 01:31 | Let's say I want to use this Droid Sans
font, and the size is good for that and
| | 01:38 | I'm going to make it a little bit bigger.
| | 01:40 | And then I can change the Body Text,
so now it'd be this text over here.
| | 01:43 | So I'll change that to something else
too, so I'll pick this one, for example.
| | 01:49 | Now what's great about this Preview
feature is that, as you can see, sometimes
| | 01:54 | these fonts don't look very good when
you add them to your site and you can see
| | 01:58 | it when you add them to
your site before you buy them.
| | 02:01 | So I can try to finagle this until
it looks half decent and I'll quickly
| | 02:06 | realize that this particular font in
this particular theme doesn't look good.
| | 02:10 | So I can go and try something else and
see if that works better and it does.
| | 02:14 | Once I'm finished with this, and if I
really like it, I can now click Save fonts
| | 02:19 | and purchase, and I'll go directly to
the Purchase page, and I actually buy
| | 02:22 | these fonts so that I can
implement them on my site.
| | 02:25 | If I don't like it or I don't want to
spend the money, I can simply go back to
| | 02:29 | Custom Design and everything gets reset.
| | 02:32 | In addition to the Custom Fonts, you
can also upload Custom CSS for your site
| | 02:36 | and really make dramatic changes to your site.
| | 02:39 | Click on the Try it for free button
or click on CSS up here to go to the
| | 02:43 | Preview page and from here you can either add
new CSS or replace the existing CSS altogether.
| | 02:50 | If you're not familiar with CSS,
I'll give you a quick explanation.
| | 02:55 | CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is the code
that decides what the website looks like.
| | 03:00 | So if we go to our main website here,
the CSS tells the browser this website is
| | 03:07 | exactly this wide, it has a gray
background, the main site is white, the font is
| | 03:12 | this size and color, when I hover over
it it's blue, the image displays down
| | 03:16 | here then there is a menu.
| | 03:17 | It actually decides everything you can see.
| | 03:20 | If you turn the CSS off, you
basically get this page without any styling.
| | 03:24 | Well I'll show you what that looks
like just so you can get a better
| | 03:27 | understanding of it.
| | 03:29 | So I'll go in here, and I'll mess with the
code of this page and take away the style sheet.
| | 03:35 | So without the Style Sheet or
without the CSS code, you're now looking at
| | 03:40 | the exact same website except, it's not
styled at all. And it looks pretty weird, right?
| | 03:45 | But when I reload it that style sheet
kicks back in and we're now back where we were.
| | 03:51 | So what you're doing when you're
buying the CSS Upgrade is you're buying the
| | 03:55 | right to add your own style
code to change things in your site.
| | 03:59 | And I'll give you a very quick example.
| | 04:02 | If I go in here, and I want to change
the font of my site, which right now is a
| | 04:07 | standard font, it's probably Arial or Helvetica.
| | 04:11 | I want to change it to Georgia
which is more of a Times-type font.
| | 04:15 | I can go in and set the Body Style and
then say font-family is Georgia, Times
| | 04:25 | new Roman, Times, Serif, and I'll end my style.
| | 04:34 | And when I click Preview this new
style gets applied to the existing code.
| | 04:39 | So as you can see, I've now changed
all the fonts to different font type.
| | 04:43 | And that might be a little bit
confusing because I said that you could upgrade
| | 04:47 | to different fonts or what I'm using
right now is a standard font that comes
| | 04:51 | with all computers rather than one of
the fancy fonts that comes from Typekit.
| | 04:56 | So in reality, if you want to change it
to something like Times New Roman you
| | 05:00 | shouldn't need to buy the Font
Upgrade but the font upgrade and the Style
| | 05:05 | Upgrade come together.
| | 05:07 | This is just a small taste of what is
possible if you get the CSS Upgrade.
| | 05:11 | In reality, the CSS Upgrade allows you
to do some very dramatic changes to the
| | 05:16 | website and really make the
theme look completely different.
| | 05:19 | And you have two options, too.
| | 05:21 | You can either append your CSS to the
existing theme CSS down here, Add my CSS
| | 05:27 | to the Twenty Eleven CSS stylesheet, or
you can choose not to use the original
| | 05:31 | style sheet at all but replace
it with your own style sheet.
| | 05:34 | It's is a very powerful feature, and
if you know what you're doing you can
| | 05:39 | really make something very cool here.
| | 05:41 | However, it's a bit of a learning curve,
so if you're not familiar with CSS,
| | 05:45 | I recommend you play around with
it before you even consider this.
| | 05:49 | The Custom Design feature on WordPress.com
allows you a whole new level of
| | 05:53 | control of the appearance
of your site, at a price.
| | 05:56 | If you want to take more control of
your sites but you don't want to host the
| | 06:00 | site yourself this may be a good option.
| | 06:03 | Just keep in mind that you are still
restricted by the themes that are available
| | 06:06 | and you need some serious coding
skills to be able to rewrite your CSS.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Enabling a WordPress.com site for mobile devices and the iPad| 00:00 | In the last few years, the
Internet has seen a mobile revolution.
| | 00:04 | By that I mean, more and more people
access the Web using mobile devices like
| | 00:08 | smart phones and tablets.
| | 00:10 | The problem is that most websites are
designed to fit on bigger screens and
| | 00:15 | when you use a mobile device with a smaller
screen you get a sub-optimal user experience.
| | 00:22 | To solve this problem, you can either
activate a mobile-friendly theme or you
| | 00:27 | can use the built-in feature in
WordPress.com that enables mobile-friendly
| | 00:32 | options for smart phone and tablet
users and a snazzy and highly customizable
| | 00:37 | experience for iPad users.
| | 00:39 | Let's first take a quick look at
this idea of mobile-friendly themes.
| | 00:43 | The Twenty Eleven theme is one of the themes
available on WordPress.com, that is mobile-
| | 00:48 | friendly or responsive as it's called.
| | 00:51 | By responsive, I mean that when we
change the width of the screen size, you'll
| | 00:56 | notice that the content reorganizes
depending on the size of the screen.
| | 01:01 | You see here that for instance, the
sidebar disappears leaving more room for the
| | 01:06 | content, and that the content resizes
depending on the width of the screen.
| | 01:11 | That means if you're using a tablet or a
phone you'll still get the same content
| | 01:16 | but it's laid out in a way that
makes more sense for a smaller screen.
| | 01:20 | This is what's called a responsive
theme, and WordPress.com has several
| | 01:24 | responsive themes available.
| | 01:26 | If you go to theme.wordpress.com and
search for Responsive Width you'll find a
| | 01:32 | list of all the Responsive Width themes.
| | 01:35 | You can also search for mobile themes
on WordPress.com Support and you get a
| | 01:40 | page that explains in more detail what
responsive themes are about and how they
| | 01:44 | work and what happens when you
don't have a responsive theme.
| | 01:49 | But responsive themes are
just the tip of the iceberg.
| | 01:52 | WordPress.com has some built-in
features that create custom mobile-friendly
| | 01:57 | experiences for those visiting
WordPress.com sites on their mobile devices.
| | 02:02 | If you go to the Dashboard and you go to
Appearance and then down to Mobile, you
| | 02:08 | can toggle the Mobile Theme on and off.
| | 02:11 | By default, Enable mobile theme is set
to Yes which means that when people visit
| | 02:15 | the site using a cell phone or
tablet, they'll get a mobile experience.
| | 02:20 | You can change it from Yes to No if
you want to see the mobile experience of
| | 02:24 | your theme instead, but I suggest you at
least try it and see what it looks like
| | 02:29 | so leave it at Yes and visit
the site using your mobile device.
| | 02:33 | When the mobile theme is enabled, you
can also decide whether or not you want to
| | 02:37 | show excerpts on the front page, or
if you want to just show the title.
| | 02:41 | Again it's just a Yes or No question.
| | 02:44 | Below here, you'll also have links to the
different apps available for different devices.
| | 02:48 | You know, these aren't apps that take
over and show WordPress sites in different
| | 02:52 | ways, these are apps that let you post
content to your WordPress.com site using
| | 02:57 | your mobile device, and
they're actually pretty cool.
| | 03:00 | So if you have an iPad or an Android
tablet or a Blackberry or any other smart
| | 03:05 | phone you should really go check out
the market and download the WordPress
| | 03:08 | mobile app, and you'll see you'll be able to
post directly from your cell phone or tablet.
| | 03:13 | In addition to the standard mobile
options, you'll also have a special
| | 03:17 | option just for iPad.
| | 03:19 | It's found in the same
place under Appearance>iPad.
| | 03:23 | Now, this function, if you enable it,
links your WordPress.com site with the
| | 03:29 | service called Onswipe.
| | 03:30 | You can see what it looks like
over here on the Onswipe website.
| | 03:34 | Onswipe basically creates a custom
iPad experience of any blog that works
| | 03:40 | more like a magazine, and has a very different
layout from what you would get on a regular blog.
| | 03:45 | It's actually really cool, and it's
easy to setup but you have to do some
| | 03:49 | small pieces of work.
| | 03:51 | So what you do is, you activate
Onswipe first and then you can set a Cover
| | 03:55 | Display and you can then either choose
No cover or you can show an image from a
| | 03:59 | recent post or you can
use a Launch Screen Image.
| | 04:03 | So I'm going to use a launch screen
image, and then I'm going to upload a Cover
| | 04:07 | Logo and this cover logo has to be
200 x 200 pixels and a transparent PNG.
| | 04:13 | So I'm going to choose a file that
I've already created, that fits that
| | 04:16 | exactly, and then you can upload a
Launch Screen Image, because you see I set
| | 04:23 | it to Use the launch screen image and
I've already created an image that is
| | 04:27 | exactly 768 x 1004 pixels.
| | 04:31 | So I will upload that image into the
system and then I'll save the settings.
| | 04:39 | Now for whatever reason and this has
happened to me before, the saving doesn't
| | 04:43 | always catch the first time so
you may have to do this two times.
| | 04:46 | So I'll go and reset this again,
upload the same image, upload the same cover
| | 04:54 | and save settings again, and now we
have both the cover logo and the launch
| | 05:01 | screen image applied.
| | 05:02 | You can also choose to change the
Display Font, you have a bunch of different
| | 05:06 | fonts to choose from here, and you can even
change the Sample Text color for the accents.
| | 05:11 | You have all these different colors
to choose from and when you save these
| | 05:14 | settings iPad users will get a
completely different experience when they
| | 05:18 | visit your website.
| | 05:19 | Now all this mobile stuff might seem
like a little bit of extra work that
| | 05:24 | doesn't seem all that necessary, but
I guarantee you, this will become more
| | 05:28 | and more important as we move forward,
because fewer and fewer people are
| | 05:31 | using their computers to surf the
Internet, and more and more people are using
| | 05:35 | their mobile devices.
| | 05:36 | So setting this up now or at least
activating a mobile-friendly theme like you
| | 05:40 | can find in the Theme database, would
go a long way to making sure that people
| | 05:45 | who visit your site using mobile
devices get a mobile-friendly experience.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. The Twenty Eleven (Default) ThemeExploring theme options| 00:00 | One of the great things about working
with an application like WordPress is that
| | 00:04 | it's in constant evolution.
| | 00:06 | An example of that is the introduction
of the new Theme Customizer functionality
| | 00:11 | that came with Version 3.4 of WordPress,
which was released shortly after we
| | 00:16 | created, The WordPress
Essential Training courses.
| | 00:19 | So before we dive headfirst into how
you can customize the Twenty Eleven theme, let me
| | 00:24 | give you a preview by using the
Theme Customizer, so you can see how cool
| | 00:28 | this new feature is.
| | 00:29 | The Theme Customizer is accessible
from two different locations in WordPress.
| | 00:34 | You can either access it from the front
-end by going to the WordPress toolbar
| | 00:39 | and dropping down and selecting
Customize, or you can go to the back-end, go to
| | 00:45 | Appearance > Themes, and click
Customize under the currently active theme. Both
| | 00:51 | will take you to the same place.
| | 00:53 | So I'll click on this and open it.
| | 00:55 | What you have here on the right when
you open the Theme Customizer is the
| | 00:59 | currently active theme, in this case
Twenty Eleven, that's customized in
| | 01:03 | whatever way it was configured.
| | 01:05 | On the left, you have all the
customization options that come with the Theme
| | 01:10 | Customizer, and depending on the theme,
this list will be longer or shorter.
| | 01:15 | This list gives you information about
the theme and also gives you all the
| | 01:18 | customization options the developer has
allowed you to use inside the Theme Customizer.
| | 01:24 | So from the top you get information
about the theme; here we see a preview image
| | 01:29 | and some text, and then from here on,
we get all the customization options.
| | 01:33 | Now what's really cool about the Theme
Customizer is that you can now experiment
| | 01:38 | with your theme and make changes to it
that only appear on your computer, and
| | 01:43 | it's not until you save it that other
people can see it, which means you can
| | 01:47 | change features on your site and see
if they work before you publish them.
| | 01:51 | Let's say for instance, I want
to change my site title and tagline.
| | 01:54 | Now if you're looking at the site right
now, you see there is no site title and
| | 01:58 | tagline, and depending on where you are
in the course, you may not have actually
| | 02:03 | configured the site to look exactly
like what it is now. That's because what
| | 02:07 | you're looking at is the final project
in this course, and I've just kind of
| | 02:12 | jumped ahead, because we're
recording this later.
| | 02:14 | So first I'm going to reactivate the
Site Title & Tagline by dropping down the
| | 02:18 | option and going down here
and say Display Header Text.
| | 02:21 | When I do that you see the preview
changes immediately and we now have the
| | 02:26 | site title and tagline.
| | 02:27 | And now I can go and edit it.
| | 02:29 | For instance, I can change the Site
Title to Samoca Gallery, and as I do that,
| | 02:34 | you get an instant preview of
what that's going to look like.
| | 02:38 | And that preview is permanent on the
site, on your computer, so you can even
| | 02:42 | navigate and see that that preview stays.
| | 02:46 | If you don't like what you just did, you
can simply go and edit it back, and you
| | 02:52 | are back to where you started.
| | 02:54 | So I can go turn off the Header
Text again and it just disappears.
| | 02:57 | Going down I can also change the colors, in
this case the Background Color of the theme.
| | 03:02 | I can go and change that to a red for
instance, you see it appears down here as red.
| | 03:08 | And you can literally experiment until
you find the color you want, which is
| | 03:13 | really cool, because previously, you
would have to go in, change the color,
| | 03:17 | preview, and then go back and
change the color and preview.
| | 03:20 | But now you can do all that in the
Customizer and see what it ends up looking like.
| | 03:24 | I'll set that back to white, you
can also change the header image.
| | 03:28 | What you see here is a large header
image I uploaded and if I go to the Header
| | 03:32 | Image option, you'll see the preview
of that image and here I can also go to my
| | 03:37 | computer and either drag and drop the
file in, or I can use the browser to select
| | 03:41 | the new file, or I can go check
previously uploaded files I've used for the
| | 03:45 | header and select one of those, or if
the theme supports it, I can select one of
| | 03:49 | the Default header images.
| | 03:50 | When I select them, they automatically
preview in the Window, so I can see what
| | 03:55 | they're going to look like, and again,
I can navigate somewhere else in the
| | 03:58 | site and see that it stays the same, so
I can really test out the header image
| | 04:03 | before publishing it.
| | 04:04 | If I don't like what I just did, I can
simply go back to Uploaded, select the
| | 04:08 | original image again and I'm
back where I started.
| | 04:11 | Likewise, you can set the Background Image.
| | 04:14 | Right now we have a tiled background
image that goes from left to right, but
| | 04:18 | here I can change the settings.
| | 04:20 | I can set it to No Repeat.
| | 04:21 | I can set it to see that it
appears again and again and again.
| | 04:25 | I can set it to Tile
Horizontally, which is what I did.
| | 04:28 | And I can also change things like the
Background Position of image, and also
| | 04:31 | whether or not it's Fixed or Scrolled.
| | 04:34 | This allows you to experiment with
different background images and see what they
| | 04:38 | look like on the site before you publish them.
| | 04:41 | At the bottom, we have two options
that will appear on every theme.
| | 04:44 | They are Navigation, which gives you
all the different navigation areas on the
| | 04:48 | site, and allows you to define what
menu to display in that navigation area.
| | 04:53 | So for example, in the header here, if
I want to change the Header menu to the
| | 04:58 | Sidebar menu I defined, I
simply click it and it changes.
| | 05:02 | And I can also change whether I want the
front page to be my latest posts or a static page.
| | 05:08 | Once you are done with your
customizations and you're happy with what the site
| | 05:12 | looks like you can click Save & Publish,
| | 05:14 | and what you see in your computer will
become public for everyone, or if you
| | 05:18 | don't like it, you can click Cancel and
WordPress will jump you back to where you started.
| | 05:23 | That means if you activated the Theme
Customizer from the front-end, you will
| | 05:27 | land on the front-end, and if you
activated the Theme Customizer from the
| | 05:30 | back-end, like I just did, I
land on the back-end.
| | 05:34 | And one last thing, the Theme
Customizer is an addition to the functionality
| | 05:39 | that's already in WordPress.
| | 05:41 | That means all the stuff I just did,
changing the header image, changing the
| | 05:45 | background, all of that is still
available inside WordPress Admin.
| | 05:48 | We can still go to menus and change the menus.
| | 05:51 | We can still go to Header and
configure the header. We can still go to
| | 05:55 | Background and configure the
background, but the Theme Customizer makes it
| | 05:59 | easier to preview what you're doing
without having to jump back and forth
| | 06:03 | inside the menus.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting a custom background| 00:00 | The Twenty Eleven theme comes with a whole
slew of customization options including
| | 00:05 | changing the background.
| | 00:06 | You can change both the overall
background color and also attach a background
| | 00:10 | image to your site to
create some interesting looks.
| | 00:14 | The background of the Twenty Eleven theme is
controlled under Appearance, and Background.
| | 00:19 | From here, you can see a preview of your
background and you can make the changes you want.
| | 00:25 | Let's start from the bottom.
| | 00:26 | The simplest thing you can do is
attach a new Background Color to your site.
| | 00:30 | You can either put in the exact hex
value of a color you want, or if you don't
| | 00:35 | know exactly what you're looking for,
you click the Select a Color box.
| | 00:39 | This opens a color wheel where you
can pick pretty much any color you want.
| | 00:42 | So let's say, you want the
background to be an orange color.
| | 00:45 | You simply pick it, the hex value will
appear here, you see the preview up in
| | 00:50 | the Preview box, and when you click
Save Changes and reload your page, the
| | 00:57 | background goes from gray to orange.
| | 01:00 | This background also
overrides the theme settings.
| | 01:03 | So if we go back to Theme Options and
select the dark theme instead, you'll see
| | 01:12 | that the background stays orange,
whereas the content changes to black.
| | 01:17 | So I'll swap that back to white
again and go back to background.
| | 01:22 | If you don't like the color you picked,
you can simply delete the hex code,
| | 01:27 | click Save Changes, and you go back
to the default color, which is the gray.
| | 01:35 | In addition to adding a background color,
you can also upload a background image.
| | 01:39 | Now you can do some different
things with background images.
| | 01:42 | You can either do what's called Tiling,
which means you put a small image up and
| | 01:46 | then it gets stacked either horizontally
or vertically, or both horizontally and
| | 01:51 | vertically over the entire background,
or you can add an image that appears only
| | 01:55 | once, either to Center, to
the Left, or to the Right.
| | 01:59 | To use a Background Image,
I'm going to go choose a file.
| | 02:02 | So first, I'm going to show you how
to use a regular background image.
| | 02:05 | So I'm going to go grab
this one because it looks nice.
| | 02:08 | Then I'll open it and
I'll upload it to the system.
| | 02:12 | Now that the image is uploaded to the
system, you see that by default it's
| | 02:15 | tiling both horizontally and vertically.
| | 02:19 | I can change that by going down to
Display Options and change the Display Options.
| | 02:23 | First of all, I can change the Repeat factor.
| | 02:26 | If I click No Repeats, you'll only see
one instance of the image, and now you
| | 02:30 | can see that it's floating to the left.
| | 02:32 | I can also change it to Center or
Right and then back to Left again.
| | 02:37 | If I set it to Tile, it tiles both
horizontally and vertically, or I can choose
| | 02:42 | Tile Horizontally only, or Tile Vertically only.
| | 02:45 | In a little bit, you'll see why you
might want to use these features, but for
| | 02:49 | now I'm going to set it No Repeat,
Left and Scroll, and click Save Changes.
| | 02:55 | When I reload my page now, you'll see we
have this gigantic background image here.
| | 03:01 | Now it's a very, very large image,
which means that it'll span quite far down,
| | 03:05 | but at one point it simply
terminates and we get this harsh line.
| | 03:09 | That's because the image
scrolls with the content.
| | 03:12 | If I don't want the image the scroll
with the content, I can go back in here
| | 03:16 | and set it to Fixed.
| | 03:18 | If I save the changes and reload the
page again, you'll now see that whereas the
| | 03:23 | content scrolls, the
background image stays in one place.
| | 03:27 | This is a really neat feature and
it's quite useful if you're going to use
| | 03:30 | a background image.
| | 03:31 | Now I'm going to use this browser
to zoom out, so you can see what's
| | 03:34 | really going on here.
| | 03:35 | So I'll zoom out the browser and you can
see that the image I upload is gigantic.
| | 03:39 | But you can also see that it is aligned
to the left, and you can imagine that if
| | 03:43 | I uploaded a smaller image, you might
have a problem where the image terminates
| | 03:47 | in the middle of the block.
| | 03:48 | So, when you're using background
images, you really have to think about how
| | 03:52 | that image is going to appear on your
site, and you might want to experiment
| | 03:55 | with some different images and different
sizes, because each has positives and negatives.
| | 04:00 | We use a large image like this one,
although it'll span the entire site, it
| | 04:05 | also takes way longer to upload and way longer
to download for the people who visit your site.
| | 04:09 | I'm going to reset my browser and go
back and I'll show you some more options,
| | 04:14 | because using one of these enormous
images as a background is just one option.
| | 04:18 | If I don't want to use this image, but
I want to use something else instead,
| | 04:22 | I'll first remove my Background Image,
and now I'm back where I was to start with,
| | 04:26 | and then I'm going to add a tile image.
| | 04:28 | Now I created an image, specifically
for this purpose and it's a very thin and
| | 04:34 | long image that starts with a dark
blue and ends with a white that I'm going
| | 04:39 | to use as a gradient.
| | 04:40 | When I upload it, you'll see why,
because when it's by itself and not tiling, it
| | 04:47 | looks weird because it's just this
one line of blue on the far left.
| | 04:51 | But if I scroll down and I say Tile
Horizontally, you see all of a sudden I've
| | 04:55 | this nice gradient at the top of
the page, and because I'm tiling it
| | 04:59 | horizontally no matter how big the
screen is, it'll always keep getting this
| | 05:04 | tile that keeps appearing on the side
and you'll never run out of gradient.
| | 05:08 | I also have to remember to change the
Attachment to Scroll again, so that the
| | 05:12 | gradient sticks to the top of the page
and when I scroll down we get rid of it,
| | 05:16 | rather than that it follows the content.
| | 05:19 | Now I can save changes, go back to my
page and reload it, and you'll see that
| | 05:23 | the gradient appears here at the top.
| | 05:25 | However, it looks kind of weird
because the background color appears below it
| | 05:29 | and the default background
color is not white, it's gray.
| | 05:32 | So finally, I have to go in and change
my Background Color to solid white, and
| | 05:37 | solid white is just FFFFFF.
| | 05:38 | So I'll Save Changes, reload my page,
and now you see we have a nice blue
| | 05:48 | gradient that goes down and then it
merges into clean white, very nice.
| | 05:55 | As you can see, even something as simple
as changing the background of your site
| | 05:59 | can have a huge impact on how it looks.
| | 06:02 | We have barely scratched the
surface of what is possible here.
| | 06:05 | The best way to explore this further
is to just experiment and upload images,
| | 06:09 | and play with the background
color and see what happens.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting custom header images| 00:00 | The header of your website is the
first thing a visitor sees when they
| | 00:03 | first visit your website.
| | 00:05 | So, it's important to incorporate
imagery that is both attractive and
| | 00:08 | inviting in your header.
| | 00:10 | If you're setting up a site for a
company it may also be a good idea to
| | 00:13 | incorporate your logo or other
identifying elements into the header image.
| | 00:18 | The Twenty Eleven header actually consists of
four elements, you have the site name here,
| | 00:23 | you have a Search box, you have a
big header image and you have the menu.
| | 00:29 | You have already seen how I can
customize the menu and now we're going to focus
| | 00:32 | on the rest of the header elements.
| | 00:34 | What I want to do is get rid of this
SAMOCA News text, move the Search box down
| | 00:40 | to the menu and then have this header
image display the logo of the company.
| | 00:45 | Sounds complicated, but it's actually
really easy, because all these functions
| | 00:48 | are built into the theme.
| | 00:50 | First, we need to go to the Dashboard
and then we go to Appearance and Header,
| | 00:55 | just like the theme options on the
background, the header is an optional option
| | 01:00 | that will appear in some themes, and
if it's there you can customize how the
| | 01:04 | header appears in the site, you get a
preview at the very top of the custom
| | 01:08 | header page and then you get
functionality where you can upload images, use the
| | 01:13 | default images, remove the header
image and then also configure the text.
| | 01:17 | I am going to start at the bottom
here so you can see what's going on.
| | 01:21 | First I'm going to change the text
color, so I'll select the color other than
| | 01:25 | the black, so I'll set it to a hot
pink for instance, I click Save Changes.
| | 01:30 | First we see it in the preview and it
looks nasty, and when we go to the website
| | 01:36 | it looks equally nasty. But it shows
the whole point, right? That you can change
| | 01:40 | the color to whatever you want.
| | 01:42 | So, I'll go down here and since I
didn't like the color I'm going to restore
| | 01:46 | original header text and
we're back to the black again.
| | 01:51 | The next thing I can do is simply
uncheck this header text box, when I do I'm
| | 01:57 | hiding the header text, so it won't
appear with the header image. When I click
| | 02:01 | Save Changes again you'll see that now
the header image appears on its own and
| | 02:05 | if I go to the main website, you'll see
that not only does the header text not
| | 02:09 | appear at the top, but the search box
has been moved from the top down to the
| | 02:13 | menu bar which is exactly what I wanted.
| | 02:16 | What's cool is this header image is
still a link back to the homepage and that's
| | 02:21 | what we're going to exploit next.
Because in addition to using these default
| | 02:26 | images, and you can choose to use all of
them or just one of them, if you select a
| | 02:30 | single one, you can also upload your own image.
| | 02:33 | That image has to be a 1000 x 288
pixels wide or if you upload an image of a
| | 02:40 | different sizes it'll automatically get
cropped down, so I've created an image
| | 02:44 | just for that purpose that
has the logo and an image in it.
| | 02:47 | So I will upload that image. I'll save
my changes and now when I go to the front
| | 02:57 | page we have the nice SAMOCA
header instead of the regular one.
| | 03:02 | Now we a site that has a custom
background color, a custom header, has a custom
| | 03:07 | header layout and it looks
completely different from the original site.
| | 03:11 | If you've done all these work and you
don't like what you see, you can always go
| | 03:15 | back to where it was either by clicking
on random here to get back to the other
| | 03:19 | images or by removing the
header image altogether.
| | 03:23 | If I click Remove Header Image, we get
rid of the entire header, because right
| | 03:27 | now we don't have a header image or header text.
| | 03:30 | So, when I save this, the website will
look a bit weird, because it now only has
| | 03:36 | the menu and it has no title, so I
might want to bring that header image back.
| | 03:41 | Fortunately, WordPress remembers the
header images I upload, so I simply have to
| | 03:45 | click it, Save Changes and the header
image reappears, reload and we're back
| | 03:54 | where we want to be.
| | 03:56 | Creating a custom header image for
your site gives you the ability to add a
| | 03:59 | visual identifying element or just
something nice and personal to your site or blog.
| | 04:04 | The possibilities here are only
limited by your own imagination.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Showcase page template| 00:00 | The Twenty Eleven theme comes with a
hidden feature not many users take advantage of.
| | 00:05 | It's called the Showcase Page Template.
| | 00:08 | The Showcase Page Template is meant to
go on the front page of your site and
| | 00:12 | provides a highly customized
view of your latest content.
| | 00:15 | It's a lot of fun to play with and it
interacts with your content in an unusual
| | 00:19 | way, so let's take a look at how it works.
| | 00:22 | To use the Showcase template, we have
to use a bunch of different features
| | 00:25 | inside WordPress and set it up in a certain way.
| | 00:28 | So let's get started.
| | 00:30 | The first thing we need
to do is create two pages.
| | 00:33 | We have to create a new page that will
become the Homepage, and then we also
| | 00:37 | have to create a separate page, that
will be a placeholder for the Blog page,
| | 00:41 | which is currently on the Homepage.
| | 00:43 | So go to Pages, click Add New to add a
new page, call the first page Home, go to
| | 00:51 | Page Attributes and select the Showcase
Template and click Publish. Notice that
| | 00:57 | on this page there is no content.
| | 00:59 | You'll see why in a bit.
| | 01:00 | Then we're going to create one more page.
I'm going to call this one Blog, but
| | 01:05 | you can call it whatever you want.
| | 01:08 | Again this page has no content.
| | 01:10 | This one has the Default Template,
and I'll publish this page as well.
| | 01:13 | Now that we have both pages enabled, we can
go and change the way the front page displays.
| | 01:19 | If you remember back to the very
beginning of this course, I was talking
| | 01:23 | about how you could change the way you display
the front page, by going to Settings>Reading.
| | 01:29 | From here you have two options, you can
either display Your latest post on the
| | 01:33 | Front page or you can have the
Front page display as static page.
| | 01:38 | If you choose this, you have to pick
what page to display the Front page on, and
| | 01:42 | what page to display the Posts page on.
| | 01:45 | So I'm going to use the Homepage for the
Front page and the Blog page for the Posts page.
| | 01:50 | I'll scroll down, Save Changes, and
now I'm going to reload the Homepage and
| | 01:57 | you'll see something happen.
| | 01:59 | Notice what content that's here right now.
| | 02:01 | This is the regular
layout before I did anything.
| | 02:03 | I'm going to reload the page and
you'll see that the Front page changed.
| | 02:10 | Now we have our most Recent Post here on
the side and below it we have a list of
| | 02:15 | the other posts that are
available, and buttons to Leave a Reply.
| | 02:19 | It's a very different look from what
it was before, but what you're seeing
| | 02:22 | now is just the tip of the iceberg,
because this Showcase template has some
| | 02:26 | hidden features in it.
| | 02:28 | But to trigger those features, we
have to customize our posts first.
| | 02:31 | So I'm going to go into my Posts, and
I'm going to make some changes to the
| | 02:38 | post we already have.
| | 02:39 | First of all, I need to add some
featured images to the posts, so I'll go into
| | 02:45 | the Posts and this one already has an image.
| | 02:48 | I am going to go to the Screen Options,
make sure that Featured Image is active,
| | 02:52 | then I'm going to scroll down
and find the Featured Image option.
| | 02:56 | Here I can set a featured image for that post.
| | 02:59 | So I'm going to go to my Gallery and
select the image that's already there.
| | 03:05 | All the way at the bottom you will
have Use as featured image, and when I
| | 03:09 | click on that and close it, you'll see that
image appeared on here as the featured image.
| | 03:15 | Now I'm also going to trigger
something else on the Front page, there is a
| | 03:18 | hidden image slider on the Front page
and if I go to the Visibility and Edit it
| | 03:24 | to set this post as Sticky, you'll
see that something happens to my theme.
| | 03:28 | When I click Update and reload the
Front page we now get that featured
| | 03:39 | image appearing at the top for the
title of the post, and the next post
| | 03:44 | appears underneath it.
| | 03:45 | This feature only works if there is
a featured image in the post and if
| | 03:50 | that post is sticky.
| | 03:51 | And if you add multiple posts with
featured images that are sticky they'll
| | 03:56 | display in different ways.
| | 03:57 | Let me show you what I'm talking about.
| | 03:59 | I'll go back to Edit Posts and go back to
All Posts, and then I'll edit another one.
| | 04:05 | So I'll go to the Simple image
gallery post, scroll down, find the featured
| | 04:11 | image and I'll assign one of my
gallery items as a featured image.
| | 04:16 | So I'll pick Untitled #1, Use as
featured image, then I will change the Post
| | 04:26 | Format which is right here, to Gallery.
| | 04:32 | Just like with the other one, I'll go
to Visibility and set it as a Sticky
| | 04:36 | post, and I Update the post again.
| | 04:43 | Now when I reload the page, you'll
see that we now have two items in the
| | 04:48 | Featured slider, and I can cycle between them.
| | 04:53 | And if I click on either, I go
directly to the post for that item.
| | 04:56 | But you'll also see something
else that's really important.
| | 04:59 | When you use the Featured Image
function inside Twenty Eleven, the featured
| | 05:04 | image will override the header image.
| | 05:07 | So in this case because the featured
image is the big orange image, you see it
| | 05:11 | here in the header when we are
on the single page for this post.
| | 05:15 | This is an unfortunate side effect of
using the Featured Image function in the
| | 05:19 | Twenty Eleven Theme. But to be honest
with you, I think it is kind of neat,
| | 05:23 | because then you get a different
experience when you go to different pages, but
| | 05:27 | what matters here is what's
happening on the front page.
| | 05:31 | As you add these featured posts by
making them sticky, and you add featured
| | 05:35 | images in, you get a different view of
your content, and your Front page changes
| | 05:40 | and becomes more dynamic.
| | 05:42 | So this way you can make a highly
customized Front page, with featured
| | 05:46 | content, with other types of elements
that people will be very engaged in and
| | 05:51 | want to engage with.
| | 05:53 | Many themes come with customized
features that are not obvious at first glance,
| | 05:57 | Twenty Eleven is one of them.
| | 05:59 | By enabling the Showcase Template and
using Featured Images and Sticky Posts,
| | 06:04 | you can create a truly unique
experience for your visitors and create a site
| | 06:08 | that looks nothing like the Stocked
Twenty Eleven Theme we are all so used to.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Customizing the Showcase page with widgets| 00:00 | The Twenty Eleven Theme doesn't just come
with a custom page template for the Front page.
| | 00:05 | It also has a custom
Widget area for that template.
| | 00:08 | And even a custom Widget to boot.
| | 00:11 | Let's take a closer look at the Showcase
Sidebar and the Twenty Eleven Ephemera Widget.
| | 00:16 | You may have noticed on the Front
page that when we were using the Showcase
| | 00:20 | Template, there is a big open space to the
left on the Front page, which looks kind of odd.
| | 00:26 | This is where the Showcase Widget will appear.
| | 00:29 | Different themes have different
widgetized areas and you can have widgetized
| | 00:32 | areas that only appear on certain pages and in
certain situations, and this is a perfect example.
| | 00:38 | The Showcase Widgetized Area
only appears on the Showcase page.
| | 00:42 | So anything you add into that widgetized
area will only appear on the Front page.
| | 00:46 | To add something to it I have to go to
my Dashboard, go to Appearance>Widgets,
| | 00:52 | and here directly under Main
Sidebar, I find Showcase Sidebar.
| | 00:57 | And here I can add any Widget I want.
| | 00:58 | For instance, if I want to add the
Twitter Widget I can simply grab it, drop it
| | 01:03 | in, put in the Twitter Username,
say I want to see 5 and save it.
| | 01:08 | When it saves, I can Reload the page and
now you can see my Twitter updates right
| | 01:13 | here on the Front page.
| | 01:16 | But that's just the beginning.
| | 01:18 | Twenty Eleven comes with a Custom
Widget, called the Twenty Eleven Ephemera
| | 01:21 | Widget, and we can activate that and
then use it to display certain types of
| | 01:26 | content on our site.
| | 01:27 | If I scroll down and find it, you'll
see here it says, Twenty Eleven Ephemera
| | 01:32 | (use this widget to list your recent
Aside Status, Quote and Link posts).
| | 01:38 | That doesn't make much sense yet, but let's
first activate it and show you what it
| | 01:42 | looks like, and then we'll work on it.
| | 01:45 | So I will call this SAMOCA Ephemera
and click Save and then Reload the Front
| | 01:54 | page and you'll see nothing happened.
| | 01:58 | That's because right now
we don't have any Ephemera.
| | 02:02 | What we need to do is create
Post, using certain Post Formats.
| | 02:07 | What are Post Formats?
| | 02:09 | Well they are kind of like Tags you
attach to post that tell WordPress what kind
| | 02:13 | of content they contain.
| | 02:15 | You may remember from very earlier on
in the course that we created these Woman at
| | 02:19 | gallery post directly from
WordPress.com front page.
| | 02:23 | If I go back to the WordPress.com
front page and I click on New Posts, you'll
| | 02:28 | see here we can change between
Posts, Photo, Video, Quotes, and Link.
| | 02:34 | These are actually Post Formats and
what happens is when you create a Photo for
| | 02:38 | instance, the Image Post
Format gets appended to that post.
| | 02:44 | So what we need to do now is create Post
Formats that match what the Ephemera
| | 02:48 | Widgets are looking for,
that is Asides Quotes and Links.
| | 02:52 | So let's do that, let's add a New Post
and I'll first creative an Aside, and an
| | 02:58 | Aside is kind of like a long tweet.
| | 03:00 | It's basically a Status Update that's
not that long and it's not really a post,
| | 03:05 | but it's not, not a Post, so it's an Aside.
| | 03:07 | So I'll say Thoughts on weather in
LA, because when I flew in, it was
| | 03:15 | raining really hard.
| | 03:16 | So this a very short post, and it
really doesn't work as a blog post, but it
| | 03:22 | works well as an Aside.
| | 03:23 | So I will scroll down to the bottom here,
find the Post Formats box and click Aside.
| | 03:29 | Go up again, Publish that post.
| | 03:33 | And now when I go to the Front page
and Reload it, you'll see Thoughts on
| | 03:37 | weather in LA appear as Emphemera.
| | 03:41 | Likewise, if I find a link I really
want to link to, for example, WordPress.com
| | 03:45 | the Front page, I can go
back to my WordPress Post.
| | 03:50 | And now because I created a New Post,
it appears in this view, I can click New
| | 03:54 | Post, say Wordpress.com, and then
simply put in the link to wordpress.com.
| | 04:04 | Select the link Format, Publish, Reload
the Front page again and when I click on
| | 04:17 | this Wordpress.com link, it will
actually take me to the link it's pointing to.
| | 04:22 | So if I click on it, I'll jump to
Wordpress.com, rather than to the Post.
| | 04:27 | I can also create a Quote.
| | 04:28 | So let's say I want to Quote the front page of
Wordpress.org that explains what WordPress is.
| | 04:36 | I'll create a New Post, I'll say
WordPress is... and then I'll put in the
| | 04:43 | actual Quote here and I'll
attribute it to WordPress.org.
| | 04:49 | And then I'll scroll down and make
this a Quote, Publish a story, reload the
| | 05:02 | Front page and now the Quote also appears here.
| | 05:05 | You can go through WordPress is...
and here you see the Quote.
| | 05:08 | So as you see, by checking out all
the Features of a new theme, you're
| | 05:13 | often able to uncover hidden gems that will
take your site from ordinary to extraordinary.
| | 05:18 | By using the Showcase Page Template
and the Showcase Sidebar with the
| | 05:22 | Twenty Eleven Ephemera Widget, you've
reached the full potential of the
| | 05:26 | Twenty Eleven Theme.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. Managing Images, Video, and Other MediaManaging media from the admin panel| 00:00 | In addition to text, WordPress.com
allows you to upload and incorporate a
| | 00:04 | variety of image and
document files into your site.
| | 00:09 | These different media files are
managed by one centralized system, and can be
| | 00:13 | manipulated either from the
system or from within posts or pages.
| | 00:17 | What's really neat about WordPress is
that everything you do on WordPress is
| | 00:22 | pretty much handled in the same way.
Whether you edit a post, a page, or a media item,
| | 00:32 | the editing is very similar,
to give you a cohesive experience
| | 00:36 | throughout WordPress.com.
| | 00:39 | This allows you to easily learn how
everything works, and it ensures that once
| | 00:43 | you understand one element,
you understand pretty much all of them.
| | 00:47 | When we look at the Media Library page,
you'll see that it looks very much like
| | 00:51 | the Post page or the Pages page: you
have a list of all the items that you have
| | 00:56 | ever uploaded and you have
information about each item.
| | 00:59 | That's because when you upload an image
or another media item to WordPress.com,
| | 01:04 | what you're actually doing is
creating a post for each item.
| | 01:07 | So you'll remember, when we created an
Image gallery we uploaded four images,
| | 01:12 | but as you can see here, each of those
images sits as its own individual post,
| | 01:17 | and you can edit them individually without
having to interfere with the other images.
| | 01:22 | You also don't have to go into the original
post to change information about the image.
| | 01:26 | You can see that each of the images has
a title, and WordPress also knows what
| | 01:30 | type of file this is.
| | 01:31 | You can see it's a JPEG.
| | 01:33 | You can see who authored the image--in
this case SAMOCA News, which is what I'm
| | 01:37 | currently logged in as--and you can
see where that image appears. You see it
| | 01:40 | appears in this Image
gallery post that was posted today.
| | 01:44 | You can also do things like edit the
content here. You can click on Edit for any
| | 01:49 | of these images and when you do,
you get to the New Edit Media Page.
| | 01:54 | This looks exactly like a regular post page
because each media item is in fact the post.
| | 01:59 | And from here you can change the title.
| | 02:02 | You can edit the image through the Edit
Image function that we'll look out in a second.
| | 02:07 | You can change the caption for the
image. You can change the alternative text
| | 02:11 | or the alternative tag, and you can also add
something new called Attachment Page Content.
| | 02:17 | The Attachment Page Content appears
underneath the image when you go look at the
| | 02:21 | image on the Attachment page. And I've
mentioned this before: you can link any
| | 02:26 | image either to the image itself or
to an Attachment page for the image.
| | 02:31 | So because each image in each media item
is an actual post inside WordPress.com,
| | 02:38 | you can put extra content there.
| | 02:40 | So, on the Attachment Page Content you
could put in a long description or more
| | 02:45 | information about an image or a
document or something else and then that
| | 02:49 | information would be indexed by Google
and people could find it on Google, and it
| | 02:52 | would be much easier to find your content.
| | 02:55 | So if you had a long description of
something, you would put it in the
| | 02:58 | Attachment Page Content.
| | 03:00 | So let's take a look at how all these works.
| | 03:02 | I'm going to use the Media Library to
upload a new image and then edit the image
| | 03:07 | from within WordPress.com.
| | 03:09 | I'll start off by going to my Media
Library and clicking Add New, and then I'm
| | 03:15 | going to drag a file in.
| | 03:17 | So I'll find this file here and drag it in.
| | 03:21 | And now, without doing anything, I'll go
back to my Media Library and you'll see
| | 03:27 | the image appears as its own post.
| | 03:30 | You'll also see that it's currently unattached.
| | 03:32 | It's not attached to any specific post,
which means it will only display if
| | 03:36 | someone goes to the attachment page for the
image itself, which is the post for the image.
| | 03:42 | Now I can go ahead and edit the image.
| | 03:45 | So I'll give it a new title, and I'll
scroll down and give it an alternate text
| | 03:53 | and if I want to, I can add a caption.
| | 03:57 | Once I'm done with this basic editing,
I'm going to go and click Update, just so
| | 04:02 | that everything I did so far is saved.
| | 04:04 | But like I said, I want to edit this image.
| | 04:07 | I don't particularly like
how this image is cropped.
| | 04:09 | As you can see, the woman is slightly to
the right of the image, so you get this
| | 04:14 | weird thing where she's looking on the
short side, which to me looks at odd.
| | 04:19 | So I want to crop this image, and I
don't want to use an image editor to do so.
| | 04:23 | I'm simply going to click this Edit
Image button down here and now I get some
| | 04:28 | basic image functionality inside WordPress.com.
| | 04:32 | From here I can do things like turn the
image counter-clockwise or clockwise, and
| | 04:36 | I can also flip it horizontally or
vertically, and I can crop the image, and
| | 04:41 | that's what I want to do.
| | 04:43 | To crop the image, I'm going place my
cursor somewhere inside the image, click
| | 04:47 | my mouse and hold it, and then
just drag, and I get a crop view.
| | 04:51 | I want to make sure that my crop
view is exactly 1:1, so square.
| | 04:56 | So I'm going to into Aspect Ratio here
and type 1:1, and now you see my square is
| | 05:03 | square. And to ensure that it continues
to be square when I resize it, I'm going
| | 05:07 | to hold down my Shift key on my
keyboard and then grab the corner, and when I
| | 05:12 | drag it, you'll see that the
aspect ratio stays the same.
| | 05:19 | Now that I have the crop I want,
I simply click the Crop button here and the
| | 05:25 | image is cropped for me.
| | 05:27 | Now I can click Save and I have a
cropped version of my image that I can use.
| | 05:34 | Now that I have a new image, I can
go into any of my posts--for instance,
| | 05:41 | My wooden monkey post--
| | 05:42 | I can scroll down, and then I can
add the image from my Media Library.
| | 05:47 | I'll go to the Media Library.
Here we have the image.
| | 05:52 | You see all that information I already
put in: title, alternate text, and so on.
| | 05:57 | I'll link the image to the Attachment
Page, put into Full Size, Align it to the
| | 06:06 | Center, and click Insert into Post.
| | 06:10 | Now when I preview this post and
scroll down, you'll see that when I click on
| | 06:16 | image, I jump to the Attachment
page of this particular image.
| | 06:20 | Here you'll see it displays
slightly different in this theme. You see
| | 06:25 | the full-size image, and
underneath here you get more information.
| | 06:28 | Now, if I were to go back here, to
Media Library, go to Woman at gallery, and
| | 06:37 | then type in some more information
here, and update the image, I'll reload my
| | 06:45 | Attachment page to the image, and you'll
see now that extra information I put in
| | 06:50 | appears here at the bottom. But like I
said, WordPress doesn't restrict media
| | 06:55 | items to images only.
| | 06:56 | You can also upload other things, like
documents. For instance, down here I have
| | 07:01 | uploaded a document called SAMOCA info.
When you go and open it, you see that
| | 07:06 | this is indeed a document,
and it's a Word document.
| | 07:09 | So it doesn't have the same
functionality as an image.
| | 07:12 | You don't have a title and an alternate
description and you can't crop the document
| | 07:17 | because it's a document.
| | 07:18 | What you can do is give the document the
caption if you want to, and you can also
| | 07:23 | put in Attachment Page Content.
| | 07:24 | And this is really important, because
if you add a document to the web, the web
| | 07:30 | can't really read the
document; it's just a file.
| | 07:32 | So if you want people to be able to
find the document based on the information
| | 07:35 | in the document, you can copy some of
that information into this Attachment Page
| | 07:39 | Content, and that way it gets indexed on
search engines and people can find it.
| | 07:44 | Once we have a document in our Media
Library, adding it to a post is the same as
| | 07:50 | adding an image to a post.
| | 07:52 | Let's say you want to create a new
post that has this document in it.
| | 07:55 | All you would have to do is say
"Important document" and then place your cursor
| | 08:02 | where you want the document to appear,
click Add Media, go to the Media Library,
| | 08:07 | find your document, click Insert into
post, and a link will be placed in your
| | 08:13 | post and when you click on that
link, you'll download the document.
| | 08:17 | There's one final thing about
WordPress.com and media that I want to point out.
| | 08:22 | In some cases you may want to
upload video to WordPress.com.
| | 08:27 | If you want to do that, you have
to get the VideoPress upgrade.
| | 08:30 | You can see, under the Media Library,
there's a link directly to purchase the
| | 08:34 | VideoPress upgrade, and you can
also get it directly from the store.
| | 08:38 | Now, I'm going to give you a tip here.
| | 08:40 | If you want to have complete control
over your own videos, so you don't want
| | 08:45 | people to share them unless they go
to your website and you want to control
| | 08:49 | every aspect of it, by all means, buy
the VideoPress upgrade and host
| | 08:53 | your videos on WordPress.com.
| | 08:55 | That way you have absolute control.
| | 08:58 | However, if you want as big of reach as
possible with your video and you want as
| | 09:02 | many people up to see as possible and
you don't mind Google ads, then I suggest
| | 09:06 | you upload your videos to YouTube
and then simply embed them into your
| | 09:10 | WordPress.com blog instead, because a
video on your own blog may not get as much
| | 09:15 | of a reach as a video on Youtube.com.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Managing media library assets from within posts and pages| 00:00 | Because WordPress handles all uploaded
media in a dedicated Media Library, you
| | 00:05 | can call, edit, and remove any media asset
while you're in the Edit Post or Edit Page view.
| | 00:11 | This is an extremely powerful tool, but it
comes with some serious warnings attached.
| | 00:15 | Let's say, I want to create a new post,
and I'll paste in some text here using
| | 00:22 | the Plain Text function, and do some
basic cleanup, and I'll cut this out and
| | 00:29 | use that as the header. And then I
realize that, although I want to use an
| | 00:37 | image in here, I've actually already
uploaded that image to WordPress and used
| | 00:41 | it in a previous post.
| | 00:43 | In that case, instead of uploading
the image again, and therefore having a
| | 00:47 | duplicate of the image on the Internet,
I'd rather use the image that already
| | 00:51 | exists in my library.
| | 00:52 | So I'm going to place the cursor
where I want the image to appear.
| | 00:56 | I'll click on the Add Media button, and
then instead of going to From Computer
| | 01:01 | and uploading the image or even
finding the image inside my system and then
| | 01:05 | getting the URL, I'm going
to go to the Media Library.
| | 01:08 | From here, I can find all the images
that I've uploaded to the system, and if I
| | 01:13 | have a lot of them I can
even do a search to find them.
| | 01:16 | So here I'm going to navigate
through until I find the image I want.
| | 01:19 | It's this one, the Gallery building.
| | 01:21 | I'll click Show to get all the
information about it, and make sure that the
| | 01:24 | Caption is what I want.
| | 01:26 | It's not, so I'm going to change
the Caption for this page only.
| | 01:30 | So I'll change the Caption to,
Come visit our new facilities.
| | 01:37 | I'll scroll down and do the
same thing I've done before.
| | 01:40 | I'll take the link away.
| | 01:42 | I'll find the right size that I want
to use, in this case, the Full Size, and
| | 01:46 | I'll click Use as featured image first,
because I want this to be the featured
| | 01:50 | image of the post and then
I'll also click Insert into Post.
| | 01:54 | Now you see the image appear.
| | 01:55 | It has that caption I just
entered, and everything is fine.
| | 02:00 | To finish my post, I'm now going to
click News for the Category and also add a
| | 02:04 | couple of Tags, exhibition, and also
the name of the artist which was what,
| | 02:13 | Siobhan Westhoff, and I'm good to go.
| | 02:21 | But, let's say, I want to make some changes to
the image after I've inserted it into the post.
| | 02:25 | If I click on the image and click on
the Image Editor, I get the ability to
| | 02:30 | change the physical size of the image
and I can also change the Title, Text,
| | 02:34 | Caption, Link URL, and Alignment, and
I can even go to the Advanced Settings
| | 02:40 | and change things like the Source or the
Size or Class and do some more advance things.
| | 02:46 | But that's not what I want to do here.
| | 02:48 | What I want to do is actually
change the image itself.
| | 02:52 | In that case, I have to take the image out.
| | 02:54 | So I'm going to go in and remove image
by clicking on it and deleting the image.
| | 03:00 | I'll place the cursor
back where I want it to be.
| | 03:02 | I'll go to Upload/Insert>Media Library,
find the image I'm looking for, click
| | 03:09 | Show, and then click Edit Image, and
now we're back in that Image Editor.
| | 03:15 | So from here, I can do
something like crop the image.
| | 03:18 | So let's say, I want to crop it
to just have the top of it here.
| | 03:21 | I'll click the Crop Tool and save it.
| | 03:25 | Now you may wonder, is this really a good idea?
| | 03:29 | Didn't I just cropped down the image
so that all the other places where that
| | 03:33 | image appears, it will now be cropped as well?
| | 03:36 | That's not the case.
| | 03:37 | Now what I did was I created a new
version of the image that got saved
| | 03:40 | separately, that is
replacing the attachment image.
| | 03:44 | The way to see that is if I close this
view again, and then click Add Media one
| | 03:49 | more time, go to Media Library, and
click on Gallery building, you'll see that
| | 03:56 | this URL is now completely different
from the original, and if for some reason,
| | 04:01 | I want to revert back to the original,
I can simply click Edit Image and then
| | 04:05 | click Restore Original Image.
| | 04:07 | But that's not what I want to do here.
| | 04:09 | I want to add this new cropped version
of the image, which is a different
| | 04:12 | version of image, into my post.
| | 04:15 | You see all the information is still the same.
| | 04:17 | We still have the same Title, same
Alternate Text, and same Caption, and when
| | 04:22 | I Insert into Posts, you see we now get this
cropped version of image, and that is what I want.
| | 04:28 | So now, I can publish my post.
| | 04:34 | What you've seen in this process I
just went through of attaching an existing
| | 04:38 | image to a new post and then making
changes to that existing image without
| | 04:43 | interfering with other posts, is a
perfect example of what I'm trying to tell
| | 04:46 | you about how WordPress works.
| | 04:48 | When I say that it's very hard to make
changes to WordPress that are dangerous
| | 04:52 | or that are destructive, I truly mean it.
| | 04:55 | WordPress is built in such a way
that everything floats freely and you
| | 04:59 | can reference anything from anywhere and
make changes, and nothing is ever permanent.
| | 05:03 | That means I can make a crop to an
image and embed it into a post, and then later
| | 05:08 | I go and say oh, I don't like it, so I
want go back to the original, and just
| | 05:12 | do that without that interfering with other
things that are already posted on my blog.
| | 05:17 | I can also make global changes across
the entire site if I want to, but those
| | 05:21 | changes tend to be in metadata,
things like Titles and Alternate Text.
| | 05:26 | What you've seen here is a work process
that allows you to highly customize your
| | 05:30 | content, based on where you display
it, without thereby destroying other
| | 05:35 | content, and it's a great way of working.
| | 05:37 | And knowing that this is possible
means that you won't have to keep uploading
| | 05:42 | the same content again and again and
again, you can simply create different
| | 05:45 | versions of the same content from
within WordPress and then make that work
| | 05:49 | for you.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
9. WordPress SettingsChanging the front page from a blog view to a static page| 00:00 | The front page of a website is very
important, it's where most people land when
| | 00:04 | they first visit the site, and
it's the face of the site as a whole.
| | 00:08 | On the Web, first impressions are vital,
so it's important that the front page
| | 00:12 | conveys the exact message you want
to put out there, and nothing else.
| | 00:16 | WordPress gives you great flexibility when
it comes to how your front page is displayed.
| | 00:21 | By default, the front page on a
WordPress site is the regular blog, but earlier
| | 00:26 | in this course, we swapped the front
page out for this custom page template
| | 00:31 | that comes with the Twenty Eleven
Theme, that shows the custom version of a
| | 00:35 | blog page, where you have a featured
post at the top and a gallery that you can
| | 00:39 | switch, you have the most recent post
at the top, and then you have a list of
| | 00:44 | the next post underneath.
| | 00:45 | But what if I want to have a
normal static front page instead?
| | 00:51 | Even though we've gone through how to
change the front page one time in this
| | 00:54 | course, it's worth repeating, because
it's important, so I'll take you through
| | 00:57 | the steps one more time.
| | 00:59 | I go into my Dashboard and what I need
to do now is first create the page I want
| | 01:05 | to be my front page.
| | 01:07 | So, I'm going to go to Pages>Add New
page and I'll call this page Welcome to
| | 01:14 | SAMOCA, and then I'll paste in
some content from a Word document.
| | 01:18 | So, go to my Word document, find the
information I want and use the Paste as
| | 01:25 | Plain Text function to paste it in,
Insert it, and then I'll do the styling, so
| | 01:30 | I'll make the headings H2s,
and now we're good to go.
| | 01:37 | Now I'm just going to Publish this page,
so that it exists in our system and
| | 01:42 | then I'm going to make
the changes I need to make.
| | 01:44 | Now if you watched the previous movie
where we did this change before, you'll
| | 01:47 | remember that to change the front page
from the regular blog to a static front
| | 01:52 | page, you also have to create another page
that becomes the placeholder for the blog.
| | 01:57 | What we did was we created a page
called Blog that contained nothing, it's
| | 02:02 | just a page called Blog.
| | 02:04 | What we also did was we created a page
called Home, which is going to be the
| | 02:09 | Home page and you can see
this page is also empty.
| | 02:12 | What I need to do now is change the
front page, so it's displays this new
| | 02:16 | Welcome to SAMOCA page instead of this Home page.
| | 02:19 | So, I'm going to go down to Settings>
go to Reading, and then at the very top
| | 02:25 | here you have the Options.
| | 02:26 | The Front page displays option can be
either Your latest post or a static page.
| | 02:31 | So let's first change it back to Your
latest posts, so you see what the default is.
| | 02:36 | I'll go down and save the changes and
then right-click on the site name, open a
| | 02:42 | new tab, and now you see the
standard front page with the regular blog.
| | 02:51 | What I want to do now is move the
standard front page over to the blog page and
| | 02:56 | then display, the
Welcome to SAMOCA page instead.
| | 02:57 | I'll go into Reading Settings again,
change Front page displays to a static
| | 03:03 | page, and then say on front page I want
to display Welcome to SAMOCA and on the
| | 03:08 | Posts page I want to display the Blog,
click Save Changes, Reload the front
| | 03:16 | page, and now we have the static front page
on the front page, but where did the blog go?
| | 03:22 | Well, if I go to my Address bar and
punch in my web address plus blog, I'll land
| | 03:28 | on the blog page, but people would have
to know that to be able to get there,
| | 03:33 | so what I want to do now is
add that blog page to my menu.
| | 03:36 | So, I'll go back to my Dashboard go to
the Appearance>Menus and then add the
| | 03:43 | blog page to my Main Menu, because
the Home button on the Main Menu as you
| | 03:48 | remember, points directly to the home domain.
| | 03:51 | So, what I need to do is go down to
pages find the page that I assigned to be my
| | 03:57 | blog page, in this case the one called
Blog, click Add to Menu, put it where I
| | 04:03 | want to put it, add the Title
Attribute and Save the menu.
| | 04:09 | Now when I go back to my front page,
you'll see that we have a new menu item
| | 04:13 | called Blog and when I
click on it I land on my block.
| | 04:17 | So, now we have a front page that's
static in a blog on a separate page.
| | 04:22 | Changing the front page to suit your
needs in WordPress is a relatively simple
| | 04:26 | process and because WordPress is
entirely dynamic, you're free to change to
| | 04:30 | front page back, or change it
to something else at any time.
| | 04:34 | So whereas one week, you may want the
blog to be on the front page, then next,
| | 04:38 | you can have a static page.
| | 04:40 | What page you display as the front page,
makes no difference to WordPress and
| | 04:44 | you can play around with this and
experiment until you find something you like.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Managing users| 00:00 | Part of the advantage of using a
content management system like WordPress is
| | 00:04 | the ability to have multiple users
attached to a single site and to give each
| | 00:09 | of these users different permissions based
on who they are and what they're going to do.
| | 00:14 | WordPress has extensive user management
tools built-in and using them you can
| | 00:18 | create an active community of
contributors and commenters.
| | 00:21 | To manage your users on your WordPress.com
site, you go to your Dashboard and
| | 00:26 | scroll down to Users and click All Users.
| | 00:29 | Here we get a list of all the users that
are currently registered with your site
| | 00:34 | and you can also invite new users.
| | 00:36 | As you can see, you have some basic
information about each of the users.
| | 00:39 | You have the Username, the Real Name,
the Email Address and the Role of the
| | 00:44 | user, along with how many
Posts that user has created.
| | 00:48 | You can also use this panel to edit
your own user information if you're
| | 00:51 | logged in and you can remove other
users if you don't want them to contribute
| | 00:56 | to your blog anymore.
| | 00:57 | To add new users you go and click on the
Invite New button at the very top here.
| | 01:03 | Inside WordPress.com you can invite
people that are already WordPress users by
| | 01:07 | entering their usernames or you can
invite people to join WordPress.com and then
| | 01:13 | join your blog by entering
their email addresses.
| | 01:16 | By scrolling down here you'll see that
I already invited myself as the user to
| | 01:20 | this blog by entering my own username.
| | 01:23 | But let's say I want to invite
someone that currently doesn't have
| | 01:26 | WordPress.com account.
| | 01:28 | In that case, I have to write in their
e-mail address, so I've created an e-mail
| | 01:32 | address just for that and then regardless
of whether I'm inviting someone who
| | 01:36 | is using WordPress.com or someone outside
WordPress.com I need to set a Role for that person.
| | 01:42 | Now Roles are important, because they
define what a person can and cannot do
| | 01:47 | when they're logged into your site.
| | 01:49 | The default role is always Follower.
| | 01:51 | A Follower is simply a follower of
your blog that means they can comment on
| | 01:56 | your blog that means they can read
the content that's there, but they can't
| | 01:59 | actually do anything.
| | 02:00 | All they can do is manage
their own profile from your blog.
| | 02:03 | The top level is Administrator.
| | 02:05 | An Administrator can do absolutely everything.
| | 02:08 | The only people that should have
administrator status are people that are going
| | 02:11 | to change your themes, have the right
to change for instance the name of the
| | 02:15 | site and who can use the
site and so on and so forth.
| | 02:19 | The rest of the levels
are pretty self-explanatory.
| | 02:22 | An Editor is someone who has the
ability to create posts and pages, publish and
| | 02:27 | unpublish posts and pages, edit posts
and pages and add and subtract content.
| | 02:33 | An Author can do the same,
but only for their own content.
| | 02:36 | Whereas the Contributor can write
posts and pages and submit them for review
| | 02:42 | by an editor, but they can't actually
publish it, and once an editor or an
| | 02:46 | administrator publishes a contributor's content,
the contributor can no longer edit that content.
| | 02:52 | If you want to learn more about the
roles, you can go to the User Roles page on
| | 02:57 | WordPress.com and read all about the
different user roles and how they work.
| | 03:02 | If you can't find the URL, you can
simply click on this link here and it takes
| | 03:07 | you directly to that page.
| | 03:09 | In this case I want to create a new
Author, so I'm going to assign Author as
| | 03:14 | the Role, I'm not going to bother writing a
message and then I'm going to click Send Invitation.
| | 03:19 | An e-mail is now sent to the e-mail
address I entered here and that person is
| | 03:24 | invited and you can see down here,
the status of the current invitation.
| | 03:28 | You see, we're still waiting for the
invitation to be Accepted, and if I want
| | 03:32 | to, I can Resend the invitation
if I don't hear from them.
| | 03:35 | I've logged into my webmail in an
incognito window and you'll see why in a second.
| | 03:40 | So I'm going to check my mail now and
here we have that invite from SAMOCA News
| | 03:45 | that says I've been invited
as an author to SAMOCA News.
| | 03:49 | The problem is I don't have a WordPress.
com account with this e-mail, so before I
| | 03:54 | can accept the invitation I have to
setup a WordPress.com account, and that's
| | 03:58 | why I open this in an incognito
window, because that way I can open a new
| | 04:02 | WordPress account using this e-mail
address and then be logged in, in two
| | 04:06 | different places with two different browsers.
| | 04:08 | So I'm going to click on this link to
open a new WordPress.com account and
| | 04:12 | here I can enter a Username, so I'll
choose and my Password and my E-mail
| | 04:19 | Address and I'll Sign Up.
| | 04:23 | Now that I've signed up, I need to get
that sign up e-mail that we got earlier in
| | 04:27 | the course, here it is, I am going
to Activate my account and now that my
| | 04:34 | account is activated I can go back to
that invitation e-mail and click Accept
| | 04:41 | Invitation and with that you'll see
that I'm now logged in as samocamor10, and
| | 04:47 | I'm inside the SAMOCA News website, but
a lot of the features that are available
| | 04:51 | to the administrator are not available to me.
| | 04:54 | Here I can go and create a new post
with some text in it, and I'll put it under
| | 05:04 | a Category and Publish it, and then I
can go back to my Dashboard, go to Posts
| | 05:14 | and you'll see that I only see my own post,
because this is the one I published.
| | 05:18 | I can also go look at all the posts,
but they're grayed out, so I can't go in
| | 05:23 | and edit them in any way,
all I can do is view them.
| | 05:27 | If I go back to my other window and
refresh my Invite page, I'll see that now
| | 05:33 | samocamor10 has Accepted the
invite and has become an Author.
| | 05:36 | So, I can now go to All Users,
I can see I now have three accounts,
| | 05:42 | two Administrators, and one Author and
the Author has published one post.
| | 05:47 | Now there is one more
important example I want to give you.
| | 05:49 | In some cases you have a
blog that's set to private.
| | 05:52 | If I go to Settings and Privacy, you'll
remember that here I could set the Site
| | 05:58 | Visibility to either Allow search
engines to index the site, be invisible to
| | 06:03 | search engines, or I can set it to be private.
| | 06:06 | If I set it to be private and I Save
Changes the site becomes invisible to
| | 06:10 | anyone who doesn't have an invite.
| | 06:13 | So, what happens is I now have to invite
viewers to my blog for them to be able to see it.
| | 06:18 | I can either do that directly from
the privacy settings here by clicking
| | 06:22 | Invite Viewers, or I can go back to
Users, click All Users to see them,
| | 06:28 | and then click Invite New.
| | 06:29 | What you'll see here is that the default
role has now changed from Follower to
| | 06:34 | Viewer, so the process is exactly the
same as when I created the Author, except
| | 06:38 | in this case I'm now inviting viewers
into my site, because as a private site,
| | 06:42 | the only people who can see it
are people that are logged in.
| | 06:46 | The final thing I want to say about
user management is the most important one.
| | 06:50 | You have to be really careful about who
you invite in as Contributors, Authors,
| | 06:55 | Publishers and Administrators on your
site, because as you invite these people
| | 06:59 | in, you grant them permission
to do things to your site.
| | 07:02 | Of course, if they are just Contributors,
they can't really do much, but
| | 07:06 | inviting someone in as an Administrator
or even a Publisher means that you're
| | 07:10 | giving these people the ability to
publish content onto your site and also mess
| | 07:14 | with other people's content, and that
can be risky if you don't trust them.
| | 07:19 | So, if someone asks you to get
permission to access your site using the
| | 07:22 | Administrator account or using the
Administrator or Publisher account, you
| | 07:27 | have to make sure that you know these
people and you know they're not going to
| | 07:29 | take over your site.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Managing comments| 00:00 | At the core of the social Web lies the
ability to interact with your readers.
| | 00:04 | In a WordPress-based site, this
interaction is mainly done through comments.
| | 00:09 | Having an active commenting community
attached to your site can be hugely
| | 00:12 | rewarding, but because anyone can comment
and not everyone who comments has good
| | 00:17 | intentions, comment
management is a necessary evil.
| | 00:20 | In many ways comment spam is now
a bigger problem than e-mail spam.
| | 00:25 | Because whereas, when you send e-mail spam,
it lands in someone's inbox, when you
| | 00:29 | put up comment spam, it lands on the
internet and other people can interact with
| | 00:33 | it even if they didn't receive it.
| | 00:34 | As a result, WordPress.com has put
up some pretty severe walls to block
| | 00:39 | commenting spam that are triggered when people
try to put in garbage comments in a blog post.
| | 00:45 | But before we get to that let's look at
what happens when you create a blog comment.
| | 00:50 | You see here I've visited the SAMOCA
News site without being logged in, so there
| | 00:54 | is no toolbar at the top, which means
I can comment without being logged in.
| | 00:58 | If I scroll to the bottom of this post,
I can already see that someone has
| | 01:03 | commented, well, someone being me,
pretending to be someone else, and I see that
| | 01:08 | comment appear, because it has been approved.
| | 01:10 | From here I can now leave
a new comment if I want to.
| | 01:13 | I've already filled one in under here,
and then I either have to leave my
| | 01:16 | credentials by entering an E-mail and
a Name, or I can login using either
| | 01:21 | WordPress.com, Twitter or Facebook.
| | 01:25 | If I login the site through these, I
don't need to enter my information, because
| | 01:29 | it will be grabbed from these services.
| | 01:31 | So what I am going to do now is
pretend to be someone else, let's say I know
| | 01:35 | someone's E-mail address, they are a user
of WordPress.com, but that person is not me.
| | 01:40 | So I am going to say mor10@samoca.org, and
put in the Username which is samocamor10.
| | 01:47 | What happens if I now click Post Comment?
| | 01:49 | Well you'd think that I'd be
able to just post a comment, right?
| | 01:53 | But WordPress is too smart, it knows
that this is already an account with
| | 01:57 | WordPress.com, so it won't let me post
that comment unless I enter a Password.
| | 02:02 | So no one can pretend to be you,
posting as you on WordPress.com, that's great.
| | 02:09 | But I can still go in and just put
in some garbage here, so I'll just say
| | 02:12 | brr@daa.com and give myself a name,
iamcool and then I can click Post Comment.
| | 02:21 | Now that comment is pushed into the
system, you can see it appears here, but it
| | 02:25 | says, Your comment is awaiting moderation.
| | 02:28 | That's because I turned on some basic
moderation features in my site earlier in the course.
| | 02:33 | Now I can go to my other browser, where
I am logged in to my Dashboard and I'll
| | 02:38 | refresh this page, and you see right
here at the top in the WordPress toolbar,
| | 02:43 | I have a flag, it's an orange flag that
says 3, that means there are now three new
| | 02:47 | comments, and I can see them right here.
| | 02:49 | I have some Notifications saying that
there are things going on, on my site.
| | 02:53 | That means I should really go
check out my Comments section.
| | 02:55 | So I am going to go to the Dashboard, go
down to Comments and open the Comments section.
| | 03:00 | And here I see all the Comments for
all the posts and pages on my site.
| | 03:05 | I can see that I have some approved
comments, they are the gray ones here,
| | 03:09 | because they are already been approved.
| | 03:11 | I have some comments that are awaiting
moderation, or are pending, those are the yellow ones.
| | 03:16 | And if I had some spam ones,
they would also appear as spam.
| | 03:19 | So now I can read these comments and
see if I want to approve them or not.
| | 03:23 | So I'll start off by reading
the top one it says, Great shot.
| | 03:26 | I like seeing pictures of
people at art galleries.
| | 03:29 | But I notice that this e-mail
address is a garbage e-mail address.
| | 03:32 | Even so, I can see where the comment
came from, and in this case it's the IP
| | 03:36 | address of my own site, but I might
want to follow that IP address and just
| | 03:40 | see where it leads, in case this turns in to
be someone who wants to comment spam later.
| | 03:45 | Because what happens is, in my case
I've made it so that if you comment and
| | 03:50 | I approve your comment once, then
you're allowed to comment again.
| | 03:54 | So I'm hesitant to approve this
comment, simply because I see that this
| | 03:58 | address is garbage, so I am going to
put it into the Spam box, even though it
| | 04:02 | doesn't look like spam.
| | 04:04 | I have another comment here, and when
I read it, it looks like it comes from a
| | 04:07 | real address and it has some text in
it that doesn't have any links in it.
| | 04:11 | However, when I actually read it out loud,
you see that it doesn't make any sense at all.
| | 04:16 | Definitely agree with what you stated.
| | 04:18 | Your explanation was
clearly the easiest to understand.
| | 04:21 | I tell you, I usually get irked when folks
discuss issues that they plainly do not know about.
| | 04:26 | The problem is, this comment, though it
seems like a real comment, is attached
| | 04:31 | to a post that only has a photo in it,
meaning, this is kind of a generic
| | 04:35 | comment that's been put out there to
lure you to accept it as a real comment and
| | 04:40 | then they get into the system, and
then they can start spamming your site.
| | 04:44 | So again, this is obviously a spam
comment, but it's really well camouflaged.
| | 04:48 | So again, I am going to
click Spam to get rid of it.
| | 04:51 | If I am unsure and I think, oh, may be I
spammed something that wasn't a spam or
| | 04:56 | what happens to me sometimes is
someone e-mails me and says, hey I left a
| | 05:00 | comment, but it didn't show up.
| | 05:02 | I can go to my Spam box,
find that comment and then say
| | 05:06 | Not Spam and it gets added back into the system.
| | 05:09 | From this comment section, I can also
go in and either Unapprove a comment,
| | 05:13 | Reply to a comment, Edit the
Comment or look at the comment's history.
| | 05:17 | So let's say I want to Reply to this comment.
| | 05:20 | I think it's a good comment and I want
to engage this viewer, so that she'll
| | 05:24 | respond back and we get a rapport.
| | 05:26 | I'll simply click on Reply and then
I can put in a comment right here.
| | 05:30 | And click Reply and if I go back to my
other browser window now, and reload the
| | 05:35 | page, you'll see that within
the comment she left, Great photo!
| | 05:40 | Here's now my reply from SAMOCA News.
| | 05:43 | I can also moderate comments
directly from my individual posts.
| | 05:47 | If I go to the posts, I can see what
kind of interaction different posts have.
| | 05:52 | And you see down here, we have the
Woman at gallery story, and it has
| | 05:56 | two comments already.
| | 05:57 | I can now go here and click on it,
scroll down and I'll see all those comments
| | 06:02 | right within the post.
| | 06:04 | And from here, I can do the
exact same thing I could do in the
| | 06:07 | Comments Moderation window.
| | 06:09 | I can Unapprove, Reply, do an Edit
of the post, or Spam or Trash it.
| | 06:16 | That means you can manage your
comments from many different places.
| | 06:19 | If you want to change the overall
settings for comments on your entire site, you
| | 06:24 | do that under Settings and Discussion.
| | 06:26 | Now I covered this briefly in an earlier
movie, and you'll notice that there are
| | 06:30 | a lot of different functionality here
that you could turn on or off, and the
| | 06:34 | best way of doing this is simply reading
them all, because it's pretty obvious once
| | 06:37 | you read the description
what the different ones do.
| | 06:40 | To allow people to comment, I have to
make sure that this Allow people to post
| | 06:44 | comments on new articles box is checked.
| | 06:47 | If I do so, I should really make sure
that I have the first one of the comment
| | 06:51 | settings here, Comment author must
fill out name and e-mail checked so that
| | 06:55 | people can't just spam your
site with tons of comments.
| | 06:57 | You can also choose whether or not
you want people to be registered and
| | 07:01 | logged in to comment.
| | 07:02 | That means people have to follow
your blog and be accepted as a follower
| | 07:06 | before they can comment.
| | 07:08 | Further down, you have this Before a
comment appears section, that allows you
| | 07:12 | to check if an administrator must
always approve the comment, which means every
| | 07:17 | time a comment comes in, you have to
approve it, so that's a lot of work and
| | 07:21 | I'll turn that off.
| | 07:22 | And you can set it so that the
comment author must have a previous approved
| | 07:25 | comment and that's where
that spam trick comes in.
| | 07:28 | Remember I said how people will leave
comments that looked real on your blog,
| | 07:32 | it's because they know that in some
cases they already have to have an approved
| | 07:36 | comment in the system to be
allowed to spam your site.
| | 07:40 | So they'll send comments to your site
that look real to get you to approve them
| | 07:44 | and then they'll start spamming your
site. So to avoid that, you should always
| | 07:47 | leave this on and be very
diligent about your moderation.
| | 07:51 | However, there is one last thing.
| | 07:53 | There's a difference between
Comment Moderation and Comment Censorship.
| | 07:57 | If you start censoring your comments
based on the content, meaning if someone
| | 08:01 | says something you don't like or if
someone is criticizing you in a nice way,
| | 08:05 | you really shouldn't take it out,
just because you don't like it.
| | 08:09 | If you censor your blog too much, then
people will notice that you only see good
| | 08:13 | things on your blog and it's
not necessarily a good thing.
| | 08:16 | However, if people put up things like
hate speech, or people do things that you
| | 08:20 | don't like or say things you don't
like or link to things you don't like, you
| | 08:23 | should always take it off.
| | 08:25 | Because your blog is your face to the
world, so if people find things that are
| | 08:30 | offensive on your blog, they'll
assume it's from you, every time.
| | 08:33 | Comments are a great way to build a
community and drive new followers to your site.
| | 08:37 | And the best way to keep them
coming is to join the conversation.
| | 08:41 | Just keep in mind, you need to be
vigilant with Comment Moderation,
| | 08:44 | otherwise your site will be
overrun with spam very quickly.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating options for ratings and polls| 00:00 | WordPress.com offers you two
advanced functions your users can interact
| | 00:04 | with, they are Ratings and Polls that you
find down here in the sidebar on the Dashboard.
| | 00:10 | The Ratings option allows your visitors
to rate your posts, your pages and even
| | 00:15 | your comments, and the Polls option
allows you to create polls and surveys that
| | 00:19 | you can put into other posts or in your
sidebar, on your site, to get people to
| | 00:24 | tell you information about themselves,
or what they think of your blog.
| | 00:27 | Let's take a look at the Ratings first.
| | 00:29 | If I go to the Dashboard and click on
Ratings, I get the Ratings Setup option.
| | 00:35 | From here I can decide whether or not
I want to Enable Ratings for the blog
| | 00:39 | posts, and I do, and then I can select
whether I want them Above or Below each post.
| | 00:44 | I want to leave them Above and then I
can also Enable it for the front page, or
| | 00:49 | in this case the blog page,
it's just poorly named.
| | 00:52 | If you check this, it means that the
Ratings will appear on your index pages.
| | 00:56 | I don't want to do that.
| | 00:57 | I'm going to Save the Changes, because
I want it on my blog posts, and then I
| | 01:02 | get Advanced Settings.
| | 01:03 | From here, if I click on that, I can go
and change the way the Ratings appear.
| | 01:09 | I can choose whether I want a 5 Star
Rating, just like you see here a 5 Star
| | 01:13 | Rating or what's called a Nero
Rating, or an up-and-down vote.
| | 01:16 | So you get either I like it or dislike it.
| | 01:19 | I tend to find that people like the
Nero Rating more, because they're now used
| | 01:23 | to the Like button on Facebook and
other places, but you may also want to use
| | 01:27 | the 5 Star Rating
sometimes for different reasons.
| | 01:30 | Once you pick a Rating system,
you can set the Ratings style.
| | 01:33 | You can pick the Size of the Rating
buttons between Small, Medium and Large, and
| | 01:38 | you can also choose a Color or
you can even upload a Custom Image.
| | 01:42 | In addition, you can
change the Text Layout & Font.
| | 01:45 | That's the font that appears
next to the Rating and gives you
| | 01:48 | further information.
| | 01:49 | You can play around with this
until we find something you like.
| | 01:52 | You also have extra settings like,
whether or not you want the results to appear
| | 01:56 | after people click on it, and you
can even track each Rating with an ID.
| | 02:00 | On the right-hand side here, you can
Customize Labels, so that instead of saying
| | 02:04 | Votes, you can make it say Leave your
vote or something else, and you can change
| | 02:08 | all the labels that are
associated with the Rating.
| | 02:11 | There are quite a few of them, and you
can have a lot of fun changing these to
| | 02:14 | something more engaging than the default.
| | 02:17 | Now the only thing I want to change is
the Color, so I change it to blue, and
| | 02:20 | I'm just going to click Save Changes
here, and then I also want to go and
| | 02:24 | activate Ratings for Pages by
enabling it and also for Comments, and just
| | 02:36 | like with the Posts, you get the
Advanced Settings here, and you can go and
| | 02:40 | play around with them.
| | 02:41 | You'll notice that for Comments, the
default setting is the Nero Rating, so you
| | 02:45 | either like or dislike each comment.
| | 02:47 | What does this look like on the site?
| | 02:49 | Well, let's find out.
| | 02:50 | I'll open the site in a separate
window, then I'll go to my Blog and open a
| | 02:55 | story and you'll see here at
the top, we have a Rating system.
| | 02:59 | So I can go in and rate this as
Excellent, and then I can also go down and look
| | 03:03 | at each comment, and I see that each
of the comments now has a Nero Vote.
| | 03:07 | So I can rate it up or down, and as I
do that, the owner of the site will be
| | 03:11 | able to see what comments are
popular, and what comments are unpopular.
| | 03:16 | Once you have the Rating system
activated, you can go to the Dashboard and find
| | 03:20 | under Ratings, Reports.
| | 03:22 | Here you get reports about what
posts and other content have Ratings, and
| | 03:27 | what those Ratings are.
| | 03:28 | That way you can see
what's popular and what's not.
| | 03:31 | This is extremely useful if you're
trying to figure out what you want to write
| | 03:35 | about, and what people like to read,
because then you can see the ratings of
| | 03:39 | your content and you see that maybe one
type of content has much higher ratings
| | 03:43 | than another type of content.
| | 03:44 | That means you may want to skew towards
what's popular and away from what's not popular.
| | 03:49 | So that Ratings. What about Polls?
| | 03:51 | Well Polls, although they appear on
the Dashboard are actually managed by
| | 03:55 | separate service called Polldaddy,
and to use Polls you have to first setup
| | 04:00 | a Polldaddy account.
| | 04:02 | So I'm going to do that now.
| | 04:04 | I'll simply click on the Auto-create a
new account button, Do it, I want some
| | 04:08 | polls and WordPress.com will go and
talk to Polldaddy.com, setup an account for
| | 04:13 | me using the same information I used
to setup the WordPress.com account, and
| | 04:18 | then integrate everything.
| | 04:19 | How can it do that?
| | 04:20 | Well, if you look at the Polldaddy
website and you scroll down to the bottom,
| | 04:24 | you'll see that Polldaddy is an
Automatic company, and Automatic is the company
| | 04:29 | that runs WordPress.com.
| | 04:33 | Now that I've integrated Polldaddy into my
WordPress.com site, I can add a new poll.
| | 04:37 | So I can either click the Add New
button up here, or I can click, Create a
| | 04:41 | New Poll down here.
| | 04:42 | From here I can create a
Question and then provide answers.
| | 04:46 | So let's say, What is your favorite type of art?
| | 04:53 | Sorry, I live in Canada, and
so I spell things properly.
| | 04:57 | I'll fix it, or I can, Add an
Image or Add Audio or Add a Video.
| | 05:05 | Then I can provide answers, so I'll say
Painting and then Photography, Sculpture
| | 05:14 | and then I need to add some more answers.
| | 05:15 | So I'll Add New Answer, and for each of
these I can also Add an Image, an Audio
| | 05:26 | file or a Video file.
| | 05:28 | I can now move these if I want to
reorder them into a different order, and I can
| | 05:32 | delete them if I don't like them.
| | 05:34 | So if I don't want Installations to be
an option, I can simply delete the answer.
| | 05:37 | So as you can see managing it is very easy.
| | 05:41 | On the right-hand side here, under Save, I can
also do things like Randomize the answer order.
| | 05:46 | If you're doing what I'm doing right now,
and you create multiple answers, it is
| | 05:50 | a good idea to randomize the answer
order, because that way people won't
| | 05:53 | automatically prioritize what's on top.
| | 05:56 | You can also Allow other answers if you want.
| | 05:59 | I've found by experimentation that by
allowing other answers, you generally
| | 06:03 | don't get the answer you want to your question.
| | 06:05 | So it's not always a good idea, but
maybe you can add a Share link, so other
| | 06:10 | people can share your poll with them,
and you can add Multiple choice, so people
| | 06:14 | can pick more the one option as their answer.
| | 06:16 | If we scroll further down, you see we can
choose between different layouts for our Poll.
| | 06:22 | The default, this is Plain White,
and personally I like the Plain White.
| | 06:26 | But, if you navigate through here,
you'll see that you have a bunch of different
| | 06:30 | options that get tackier and tackier as
you go further down the chain, and for
| | 06:36 | each of them, what you see is the front page.
| | 06:38 | So what the poll looks like before you
vote, and then when you hover over it,
| | 06:41 | you'll see what it looks
like after people have voted.
| | 06:44 | So find one you like, I'm going to stick
with the default, and then you can pick
| | 06:48 | whether you want it to
be Wide, Medium or Narrow.
| | 06:52 | I'm just going to leave it at
Medium, which is 300 pixels wide.
| | 06:55 | Then I'm going to go make sure
that the results display is correct.
| | 06:59 | Here I have the option between Showing
the full results to the voters, show only
| | 07:03 | percentages to voters or Hide all the
results, and I can check whether or not
| | 07:07 | people are allowed to do Repeat Voting.
| | 07:10 | You can either not block repeat voters,
in which case people will rig your vote.
| | 07:14 | You can try to block it based on a cookie,
and you can also block, both based on
| | 07:18 | a cookie and by IP address.
| | 07:20 | Now if you choose this last option, it
means that if several people in the same
| | 07:24 | household on several different
computers want to vote, they can only vote once
| | 07:28 | per household, because mostly several
computers in the same household have the
| | 07:33 | same IP address, because
they're on the same router.
| | 07:35 | Finally, you can decide whether or not
you want people to be able to comment
| | 07:39 | on the poll itself.
| | 07:40 | I'll leave Allow comments on, so mostly
default, and then I'll click Save Poll.
| | 07:46 | Once I save my poll, I can now go to
All Polls and I'll see it listed along
| | 07:51 | with whatever other polls I have, and
from here, I can either edit my poll, I
| | 07:55 | can click to get the Embed link
directly to the poll, I can Preview the poll,
| | 08:01 | or I can delete it.
| | 08:02 | So first, I want to preview the poll, just
so I know what it looks like, and here it is.
| | 08:06 | I can test it and I see
what the result is like.
| | 08:10 | Then I want to add this
poll into one of my posts.
| | 08:12 | So what I'm going to do is go to a post,
create a New Post, say Answer our poll,
| | 08:20 | and then I'll write some text, and then
I want to add the poll into this post.
| | 08:25 | The way I do that is by
going up here at the top bar,
| | 08:28 | right next to Add Media button,
there is the Add Poll button.
| | 08:31 | So I'll click that, I get a list of
all the polls I have available, and from
| | 08:36 | here I can simply hover over it and
click Embed into Post and just as with some
| | 08:40 | other elements that we worked with
previously, you see that the poll is actually
| | 08:44 | just one of these short quotes,
inside the square bracket [].
| | 08:48 | So to see what this looks like, I have
to Publish a story after putting it in a
| | 08:53 | category, and then I see the poll in
my post, and you can vote on anything
| | 08:59 | within the poll and when
you vote, you get the results.
| | 09:06 | Adding interactive elements like Post
Ratings and Polls can help create an
| | 09:10 | active community around your site.
| | 09:12 | WordPress comes equipped with all the
tools necessary to make this as easy
| | 09:16 | as possible.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
10. Diving Further into the World of WordPressExporting and importing in WordPress.com| 00:00 | With the site set up on wordpress.com,
you're ready to start blogging
| | 00:04 | and publishing content.
| | 00:05 | But, in many cases, people
already have content on other sites.
| | 00:09 | You may have set up a blog on blogger.
com or even on Tumblr or you may even have
| | 00:14 | a WordPress blog somewhere on wordpress.com
and you want to move the content
| | 00:18 | from that blog over to
this one. So what do you do?
| | 00:21 | Well, WordPress has an Import and
Export feature built-in that allows us to
| | 00:27 | export the content from a blog, and
also import content from other WordPress
| | 00:31 | sites and from other systems altogether.
| | 00:34 | You find these tools under the Dashboard,
under Tools, and here you have Import and Export.
| | 00:40 | So let's take a quick look
at the Import function first.
| | 00:44 | If I click on Import, you'll see that we
have a long list of sites we can import from:
| | 00:49 | Blogger, from LiveJournal, from
Movable Type, Posterous, Tumblr, WordPress
| | 00:54 | and so on, and you can also import
things like a Blogroll or Categories and
| | 00:59 | Tags from other sites.
| | 01:00 | For example, if we go to the Tumblr one,
you'll see you have to now log in to
| | 01:05 | your Tumblr account with your Tumblr
credentials, and then WordPress will go and
| | 01:09 | talk to Tumblr and grab all
the content to pull it over.
| | 01:11 | Whereas, if you go to Posterous,
again you have to log in to Posterous, and
| | 01:18 | then Posterous and WordPress will talk to
each other, and things will be imported over.
| | 01:22 | If you want to import content from an
existing WordPress site, you need to first
| | 01:26 | export the content from that WordPress site.
| | 01:29 | Fortunately, I have another WordPress
site that I can export content from.
| | 01:33 | I've opened it in a separate window
and here you see it's just called Mor10's
| | 01:37 | Sandbox and as you can see, the dashboard
is exactly the same as the SAMOCA News
| | 01:42 | site, because this is also wordpress.com.
| | 01:45 | So, what I want to do here is go down
to Tools, then click on Export, and from
| | 01:50 | here I can choose what to export.
| | 01:52 | In this case, I want to export all
content, so I'll simply click Download Export
| | 01:57 | File, and then tell the browser
it's okay to download this file and now
| | 02:01 | WordPress will take all my database
information, and compile it into an XML file
| | 02:07 | that it's put on my computer.
| | 02:09 | Once I have that XML file on my computer,
and I can go see it here in my folder,
| | 02:14 | I can import this XML file
into my other WordPress site.
| | 02:19 | So I'll go back to SAMOCA News, I'll
Import from WordPress, and then here it
| | 02:24 | says I need to upload my XML file.
| | 02:26 | So I'll go and browse for the file,
it's under Downloads, and then click
| | 02:33 | Upload file and import.
| | 02:36 | What happens now is WordPress will
read the file and find out who the authors
| | 02:40 | are for the different content.
| | 02:42 | So if you have multiple authors for that
blog, it'll list all these authors, and
| | 02:47 | then it will ask you, who do you want
to assign the different authors' posts to?
| | 02:51 | Normally, what you want to do is assign
them to the same author or just add them in.
| | 02:57 | In this case, there is only
one author, it's me, mor10.
| | 02:59 | So I'm going to sign it to
mor10 and then I'll click Submit.
| | 03:03 | Now, your import will go into queue
and WordPress will cycle through each
| | 03:07 | individual item and each individual
post and bring all that content into your
| | 03:12 | site, so that it appears.
| | 03:14 | Unfortunately, this is not an instant
process, because a lot of people are
| | 03:18 | importing their content into
WordPress, so you may have to wait a bit.
| | 03:22 | Once the import is done, you'll get an
e-mail saying that the import is done and
| | 03:26 | with all the content imported, you'll
find it, for example, in your posts and in
| | 03:30 | your media, because once the content is
imported, it becomes part of your site.
| | 03:36 | Importing and exporting content in
WordPress.com is made as easy as possible.
| | 03:40 | Even so, it's not foolproof.
| | 03:42 | So be prepared to deal with some
issues of broken links and missing images,
| | 03:46 | especially when you're
exporting and importing large sites.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Enabling the Webmaster Tools theme| 00:00 | As a site owner, you should make sure
your site is indexed properly and playing
| | 00:04 | nice with all the major search engines.
| | 00:07 | For this purpose, all these search
engine services have created Webmaster Tools
| | 00:11 | that you can link with your site, so
you can get updates on how your site is
| | 00:15 | being indexed, who is visiting your site,
and how they're finding it, and more
| | 00:19 | importantly, whether or not your
site has been flagged for inappropriate
| | 00:22 | content, or even hijacked.
| | 00:24 | Adding Webmaster Tools used to be a bit
complicated, because you had to add in
| | 00:29 | some specific code into the core of
your site, so that these Webmaster Tools
| | 00:34 | could see that the site in fact belonged to you.
| | 00:36 | But, wordpress.com has made that much easier
by adding a specific tool for this purpose.
| | 00:41 | You can find it here on the Dashboard,
under Tools, and Available Tools.
| | 00:47 | And here at the bottom, you
see Webmaster Tools Verification.
| | 00:50 | This is where you're going to put the
verification code for the Webmaster Tools,
| | 00:54 | so that your site gets tied to your account.
| | 00:57 | You have three Webmaster Tool options here;
| | 01:00 | Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo!
| | 01:02 | Site Explorer, and Bing Webmaster Center.
| | 01:04 | But, you don't need to worry about Yahoo!
| | 01:06 | Site Explorer anymore, because Yahoo!
| | 01:08 | and Bing have merged.
| | 01:10 | So now all you need is the Google
Webmaster Tools, and the Bing Webmaster Tools.
| | 01:14 | To set this all up, we have to
start by creating accounts with Google
| | 01:18 | Webmaster Tools, and Bing.
| | 01:20 | And to make that easy, WordPress
provides the links directly to those services.
| | 01:24 | So, I'll go to Google Webmaster
Tools first, and create a new account.
| | 01:29 | Now, this is important.
| | 01:30 | If you already have a Google account,
that means if you have a YouTube account,
| | 01:34 | if you have a Google Analytics account,
if you have a Google AdSense account, or
| | 01:38 | anything else that ties in with the site
you're currently using, then you should
| | 01:43 | use that Sign in to sign
into Google Webmaster Tools.
| | 01:46 | That way, all these different Google
entities will tie in together, so you can
| | 01:50 | get on analytics and advertising,
and everything in one place.
| | 01:54 | However, if you do not have a Google
account, or if you do have a Google account
| | 01:57 | but it's not associated with your
site, you should create a new account.
| | 02:02 | If you need to create a new account,
you simply click the Sign Up button up
| | 02:05 | here, and you can create a new Google
account using your current e-mail address.
| | 02:10 | So you don't need a Gmail account to do this.
| | 02:12 | You just fill in the form, and
then you create a new account.
| | 02:16 | In the case of this project, we
already have a Google account, but it doesn't
| | 02:20 | have Webmaster Tools installed yet.
| | 02:22 | So what I'm going to do is Sign in with
that account, put in the Password, and
| | 02:27 | Sign in and now I'm inside
the Google Webmaster Tools.
| | 02:31 | From here, I need to add a new site.
| | 02:33 | So I'm going to click on the Add a
site button, and then I have to put-in
| | 02:37 | the URL for the site.
| | 02:39 | In this case, it's samocanews.wordpress.com
and then I click Continue.
| | 02:46 | Now, the Google Webmaster Tools creates
a profile for this website, and gives me
| | 02:51 | code that I can add to my website, so
that I can verify that this website does
| | 02:56 | in fact belong to me.
| | 02:58 | Now, if we go back to WordPress, you
see that what we need to add here are
| | 03:03 | what's called meta key
"content" values for these tools.
| | 03:07 | So I go back to Webmaster Central, and
then I click on Alternate methods, and
| | 03:12 | from here, I can choose Add a
meta tag to your site's home page.
| | 03:17 | When I do that, I get that exact
piece of code WordPress is asking for.
| | 03:21 | So I'll just highlight that code,
copy it, paste it into this field, save
| | 03:27 | changes, and now when any page on my
site is loaded, this piece of code will
| | 03:32 | appear hidden in the top part of the
code of the website, and therefore,
| | 03:37 | Webmaster Central can see
the code and verify the page.
| | 03:40 | So now I can go back to
Google Webmaster, and click Verify.
| | 03:47 | Webmaster Tools will now visit my
website, looking for that Meta tag, and if it
| | 03:51 | finds it, you'll get this "Congratulations,
| | 03:54 | you have successfully verified
your ownership of the site" message.
| | 03:58 | If you get a warning instead, and it
says something went wrong, it might be
| | 04:01 | because it takes a little
while for WordPress to kick in.
| | 04:04 | So go to your website, load the front
page, so that you know that it's kicked
| | 04:10 | in, and then, go back and click on
Verify again to get this message.
| | 04:14 | Once your site has been verified, you
can click Continue, and now you can see
| | 04:19 | the Webmaster Tools for your site.
| | 04:21 | Now, of course, there is no
information here because this was just signed up.
| | 04:26 | But, as you start using your site and
people start visiting it, you'll see this
| | 04:29 | information start building out, and
you'll get information about your site.
| | 04:33 | So that was Google Webmaster Tools,
but we also need to add the Bing
| | 04:36 | Webmaster Center or Bing Webmaster Tools as
they're called, because Bing covers both Yahoo!
| | 04:42 | and Bing now.
| | 04:42 | So I'll go to Bing Webmaster Center
here, and from here, I need to sign up
| | 04:47 | with a Windows LiveID.
| | 04:49 | But, I don't have a Windows LiveID
yet, so I need to create one first.
| | 04:53 | So I'll click on this link,
and go create a Windows LiveID.
| | 04:58 | From here, I can create a new em-ail
address if that's what I want, but I really
| | 05:02 | like to keep everything under one name.
| | 05:05 | So I like to use the same e-mail address
for all these different services, so I
| | 05:09 | know what I need to know to log in to
all of them, and I don't have to keep tabs
| | 05:13 | of all these different addresses,
and all these different services.
| | 05:16 | So I'm going to put in the same e-mail
address, and the same Password, and I'll
| | 05:22 | repeat the Password.
| | 05:23 | And then I have to provide an alternate
e-mail address, so that I can reset the
| | 05:27 | password for this one.
| | 05:29 | Now, this really only makes sense if
you're using something like a Hotmail or a
| | 05:32 | live.com address, because otherwise,
you already have access to your e-mail
| | 05:37 | elsewhere, even so, you have to input
this information and unfortunately, you
| | 05:41 | can't use the same e-mail address.
| | 05:43 | So here, I have to enter something else.
| | 05:45 | I'll use my other address, and
then I have to pick a question.
| | 05:49 | So I'll say Favorite historical person,
and my favorite historical person is Plato.
| | 05:55 | Then, I have to fill in my own information.
| | 05:57 | So in this case, I'm going to fill in
information of the owner of the Samoca Gallery;
| | 06:01 | so Jane Samoca and the Birth Year
will be 1965, the Gender is Female, the
| | 06:10 | Country is United States, the State is
California, and just for the hell of it
| | 06:16 | I'm going to say 90210 for the ZIP code.
| | 06:19 | Finally, I have to
verify that I'm a human being.
| | 06:22 | So I'll type in this
verification code and click I Accept.
| | 06:28 | Now, I've created a LiveID, and
LiveID will now verify my e-mail address.
| | 06:33 | So if I go to my e-mail, I can
check for new e-mails, and here we have
| | 06:39 | the verification link.
| | 06:40 | So I'll confirm my account, finish
the setup, and now I have an account.
| | 06:51 | Then, I can go back to WordPress, and
follow this Bing Webmaster Center link one
| | 06:56 | more time, and this time, I can
sign in with my Windows LiveID.
| | 07:02 | From here, I have to set up my Company
Name, and Category, and other information.
| | 07:06 | So I'll say SAMOCA and the Category
would be Points Of Interest, I'll give it a
| | 07:12 | phone number and I would like to receive
Bing Webmaster information, and I would
| | 07:17 | like to get alerts for all of these errors;
| | 07:19 | Crawl Errors, Sitemaps, Index Issues,
and most importantly the Malware.
| | 07:24 | So I'll click Save, and then I can add a site.
| | 07:28 | So, down here under Sites, I'll click
Add Site just like I did under Google
| | 07:34 | Webmaster Tools, and I'll punch in my URL.
| | 07:37 | So samocanews.wordpress.com, click Submit,
and then I need to choose the correct option.
| | 07:46 | So just like the Google
Webmaster Tools, I need that tag.
| | 07:49 | So here I click on Option 2:
| | 07:51 | Copy and paste a tag into your default
webpage, and I'll copy this tag, go back
| | 07:57 | to WordPress, paste the tag in for Bing
Webmaster Center, Save the Changes, just
| | 08:07 | reload the front page to make sure
it kicks in, and then I click Verify.
| | 08:13 | And now, just like with the Google
Webmaster Tools, I get the view of the Bing
| | 08:17 | Webmaster Tools. And just like the
Google Webmaster Tools, there's no
| | 08:21 | information here because I
just started using the service.
| | 08:24 | But, if you check back a week from
now or a month from now, you'll see that
| | 08:28 | there's lots of information here about
how the website works, who is visiting
| | 08:32 | it, and what's going on.
| | 08:33 | With Webmaster Tools activated for
Google and Bing, you'll be able to track your
| | 08:38 | own site and make sure it's working
properly, it's indexed correctly, and that
| | 08:42 | it is available to as many people as possible.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Discussing the limits of WordPress.com and the benefits of self-hosting| 00:00 | Through this course I've shown you
the ins and outs of WordPress.com.
| | 00:04 | Talking about how to setup a WordPress.com
blog, how to configure that blog, how
| | 00:09 | to publish content, publish images,
get interactive with other blogs, talk to
| | 00:14 | other people and share content on the Internet.
| | 00:17 | WordPress.com is what's
called a cloud-hosted blog network.
| | 00:21 | Where millions of sites live
together and share content between them and
| | 00:25 | they share a common platform, and
though this has many benefits, it also has
| | 00:29 | some definite drawbacks.
| | 00:30 | For example, as you've seen as we've
configured this site, you have limits
| | 00:35 | to what you can do.
| | 00:36 | You have upload limits for content,
you can't publish your own videos without
| | 00:41 | buying an upgrade and you're limited
to what themes and tools you can use.
| | 00:45 | One example is a lot of WordPress
sites that are self-hosted use really fancy
| | 00:50 | plug-ins, but in WordPress.com you
can't add new plug-ins on your own.
| | 00:54 | So if you really want to get advanced
with a WordPress site and you want to
| | 00:59 | change the design to something you
designed yourself or you want to add custom
| | 01:03 | functionality through plug-ins or even
add your own videos or do other types of
| | 01:07 | advanced things, you really
can't do that within WordPress.com.
| | 01:12 | In addition, WordPress.com has
limits on what you can add to the site.
| | 01:17 | You can't add things like Google
AdSense, because that's being blocked by
| | 01:21 | WordPress.com, and though Automatic,
the company that owns WordPress.com, is
| | 01:26 | working on an advertising solution of
their own, it's not the same has AdSense.
| | 01:31 | That said, using WordPress.com, you're
able to make extremely advanced websites
| | 01:37 | that are hosted in a network that
will automatically distribute your content
| | 01:41 | out to the world and almost by
default bring readers to your site.
| | 01:45 | So it's one of those strange
situations where you have to weigh the pros and
| | 01:48 | cons but being on WordPress.com, you
get access to this enormous network of
| | 01:53 | contents and you get all the
advanced features within WordPress.com.
| | 01:58 | However, you're paying for that by
either literally paying for upgrades and by
| | 02:02 | limiting your functionality,
especially when it comes to customizing how your
| | 02:06 | site looks and behaves, so it's a tossup.
| | 02:10 | Do you go with a hassle-free WordPress.com
with a limited functionality, but a
| | 02:14 | great network, or do you install
your own version of WordPress on your own
| | 02:18 | server and create your entirely
customized site, but you don't have that same
| | 02:22 | network to fall back on?
| | 02:24 | If you want to go with WordPress.com,
that's fine, if you want to go with
| | 02:27 | self-hosting, that's also fine, it all
depends what you want to do and how much
| | 02:32 | time you want to invest in it.
| | 02:34 | Regardless you'll end up with the same
core experience, because WordPress.com
| | 02:38 | runs the same core software, as a
self-hosted WordPress site does.
| | 02:42 | If you want to boil it down to a
simple question, Morten what do you use?
| | 02:46 | My answer is not simple.
| | 02:48 | It is, if I was going to make just
the blog and I was going to blog about
| | 02:52 | something at random that was more
focused on the content and I didn't want to do
| | 02:56 | any kind of management,
I would be on WordPress.com.
| | 02:59 | But because I'm a Web developer and I
want absolute control over everything I
| | 03:03 | do, all of my sites are
self-hosted WordPress sites.
| | 03:06 | That doesn't mean one is better than the
other, it just means that they're different.
| | 03:10 | And in my case, I lean
towards the self-hosting option.
| | 03:14 | What you choose is entirely up to you, and
there's one more thing that I have to add to that.
| | 03:18 | The good thing about WordPress is if
you choose to go with WordPress.com now,
| | 03:23 | and later decide you want to move
to self-hosting, or if you start with
| | 03:27 | self-hosting now and you want to move
to WordPress.com later, you can do so
| | 03:31 | with minimal effort.
| | 03:33 | Because WordPress is specifically
designed to be able to port sites between
| | 03:37 | WordPress.com, and self-hosting
and back again, as easy as possible.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the WordPress.com social features| 00:00 | Because you're watching this video I'm
going to assume you watched the entire
| | 00:03 | course, you followed all my lessons,
and you now have a great fantastic
| | 00:07 | WordPress.com blog up and running,
with your own content and you're ready to
| | 00:11 | start working, and I applaud you for that.
| | 00:14 | Once you have a blog, the best thing
you can do is start using it right away.
| | 00:18 | Now a lot of people ask me,
well Morten, what do I write about?
| | 00:22 | What if what I write about is
boring, what if no one cares?
| | 00:25 | Well, the reality is, when you're
putting stuff on the Internet, people will
| | 00:28 | find it boring and someone else
will find it super interesting.
| | 00:31 | It doesn't matter what you write about, the
only thing that matters is that you write it.
| | 00:36 | The whole point of blogs is that you
put out what you care about and you can
| | 00:39 | write about whatever you want, I
I guarantee you someone will find it,
| | 00:44 | someone will read it, and someone will
love it, but that applies to you, too.
| | 00:47 | You have to remember that WordPress.com
is this huge ecosystem where
| | 00:51 | millions and millions of people are
posting their content all the time and
| | 00:55 | they're all like you.
| | 00:56 | They're also, they are
thinking, should I post this?
| | 00:59 | Will people find it
interesting, maybe I shouldn't?
| | 01:01 | So what you should do, when you're
not posting your own content is go to
| | 01:06 | WordPress.com on the front page and
start reading content that's already there.
| | 01:10 | Start searching WordPress.com for
interesting information and when you find
| | 01:14 | something, go and leave a comment,
write about it, share it with other people,
| | 01:18 | tell them that you like what they're
doing, ask questions, be interactive with
| | 01:23 | the other content, because once you
start interacting with them, they'll start
| | 01:27 | interacting with you.
| | 01:28 | And you have so many ways of doing that.
| | 01:31 | You can go and leave a comment, you can
Like it, you can even re-blog anything
| | 01:35 | you find on WordPress by clicking the Reblog
button and you post it directly on your site.
| | 01:40 | You can spread it through Twitter
and Facebook and other networks, and of
| | 01:44 | course, you can use what you've
already find to write your own content.
| | 01:49 | In fact, you should treat the
entire WordPress.com network as your own
| | 01:53 | private inspiration wall.
| | 01:55 | Anything you find there will make you
think of something, and the second you
| | 01:59 | think of it, hit New Post, write it
down, post a picture, do something, push
| | 02:05 | content out there and get excited.
| | 02:09 | But it doesn't stop there, remember
how WordPress is dynamic, it means that
| | 02:13 | nothing is ever final.
| | 02:15 | So let's say you go to a site and one
day you find a theme you like so much more
| | 02:19 | than the one you're currently using.
| | 02:20 | Well, all you have to do is hover over
the name of the site and you see what
| | 02:25 | theme they're using.
| | 02:26 | You can click on it, you jump to the
Theme Showcase, and if you really like the
| | 02:30 | theme, you can activate it on your
site and get a whole new look and change
| | 02:34 | everything about your site.
| | 02:36 | And then if you don't like it a
week later, you can swap back, because
| | 02:39 | everything in WordPress is fluid and
it's constantly in motion, there's always
| | 02:43 | new stuff being added, there is always
new things happening, and everything can
| | 02:47 | be exciting, if you let it.
| | 02:49 | If there's only one thing you walk away
with from this course, I hope it's this.
| | 02:54 | WordPress can be anything you want it to be.
| | 02:57 | WordPress is there to help you
publish content to the Internet.
| | 03:01 | It doesn't constrain you, it doesn't
tell you what to do, you are responsible
| | 03:06 | for your own content and you can
make it into anything you want.
| | 03:09 | So use it for something positive,
find new friends, publish things you care
| | 03:13 | about, and not to sound tacky or anything,
but make the Internet a better place.
| | 03:18 | Use it to spread the love and the love
will come back to you, and that is all I
| | 03:22 | have to say about that.
| | 03:23 | Thank you for watching!
| | Collapse this transcript |
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