WORDPRESS FOR GENEALOGISTS

Part 1: Learn the Lingo

June 18, 2012 taneya@gmail.com www.facebook.com/taneya www.twitter.com/taneya

WEBINAR SERIES
Part 1: Learn the Lingo
Basic familiarity with WordPress, how it works, the terminology used, WordPress.com

Part 2: Dissecting the Dashboard June 25th

Delve further into the WordPress Dashboard - all the parts are and what they do; begin to understand the self-hosted version of WordPress.

Part 3: Features, Features & More Features July 9th

plugins & themes - how to find them, how to choose them; DOs and DONTs; commonly seen in genealogy.

Part 4: Polishing to Perfection July 16th

more advanced - how to tweak themes, maintenance issues, site analytics

OVERVIEW

Background & WordPress Fundamentals Using WordPress Hands On: Creating a WordPress.com site Questions & Discussion

BACKGROUND & FUNDAMENTALS

WORDPRESS & ME
My Journey
1999 - basic HTML; created my first website 2003 - transitioned to TypePad -- early blogging software; the appeal for me was that I could make frequent updates and not have to code HTML to do it. Paid a monthly fee. 2004 - Blogger - free Google product 2007 - WordPress; made the switch because WordPress of fered more functionality than blogger; ability to choose more designs for my site.

WORDPRESS & ME (CONTD)

2009 My first GenWeb county site with WordPress; NCGenWeb site migrated to WordPress 2011 - Became TNGenWeb State Coordinator migrated site to WordPress + several county sites

70+
sites and counting!

WORDPRESS BACKGROUND
May 2003 WordPress ver sion 0.7 New releases ever y year latest is version 3.4 released June 13 th , 201 2 Initially a blogging platform; as new releases were developed, transitioned into more than just a blogging sof tware, but rather, a content management system.

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

JAZZY WORDPRESS
Many of the WordPress developers share a love of jazz music Every major release named after a jazz musician

WORDPRESS IS OPEN SOURCE

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

WordPress as an Open Source initiative means:

logo of the Open Source Initiative

source code is developed by the community hundreds of people work on the code and create additional code to make WordPress do even more you can use it for anything and not pay license fees
free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer. -- http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

Software system that lets you create and manage website content easily with little knowledge of web programming and/or markup languages (e.g. HTML) Most use a database to store information
"Content management systems (CMS) place the responsibility of content creation and maintenance squarely in the hands of non-technical users. cmswire.com

Content is presented to website visitors using a template

DATABASE-DRIVEN
Traditional Model Database-Driven Model

these files have your content

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

WHY WORDPRESS? ITS POPULAR

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

WHY WORDPRESS? FUNCTIONALIT Y

Plugin Power

Community
Content is King!

Site Design

Multiple Users

Social Media

WORDPRESS SHOWCASE

WORDPRESS SHOWCASE

WORDPRESS SHOWCASE

WORDPRESS SHOWCASE

WORDPRESS SHOWCASE

WORDPRESS GENEALOGY SHOWCASE

WORDPRESS GENEALOGY SHOWCASE

WORDPRESS GENEALOGY SHOWCASE

WORDPRESS GENEALOGY SHOWCASE

WORDPRESS GENEALOGY SHOWCASE

USING WORDPRESS

GET WORDPRESS
WordPress.com WordPress.org

WORDPRESS.COM
Advantages
free and super easy to set up all of the technical maintenance work is taken care of setup, upgrades, spam, backups, security, etc. your blog is on hundreds of ser ver s, so itll always remain available, even under high traf fic your content is backed up automatically youll get extra traf fic from being a par t of the WordPress.com community you can find like -minded blogger s using search and the reader your dashboard is secure (SSL) making it even safer to log in on shared networks

Disadvantages
190+ themes available which you can customize (for a fee), but you cannot upload a custom theme you cant modify the PHP code behind your blog you cant upload plugins limitations on size limitations on file upload types

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

AUTOMATTIC

http://automattic.com/

WORDPRESS.ORG
Advantages
Ability to upload custom themes Ability to upload plugins Complete control to change & customize

Disadvantages
You need a web host (generally costs $7-12 a month) Requires more knowledge & personal time to run Youre responsible for stopping spam creating and maintaining backups of your site updating the WordPress software when new versions are released

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

HANDS-ON

STARTING YOUR WORDPRESS.COM SITE

BUT FIRSTA WORD OF CAUTION

Before you create a site, it is helpful to have an understanding of what you want and how you want it organized.
Make a list of desired features Browse similar sites for ideas Draw it on paper

WORDPRESS DASHBOARD
( T H E C O N T R O L PA N E L )

VIEW THE DASHBOARD

Reminder: Back to Live Dashboard

POSTS VS. PAGES

POSTS
entries that show up listed in reverse chronological order posts are also displayed in the RSS feed of the site use categories & tags

PAGES
are stand-alone content are not listed by date are not displayed in the RSS feed do not use categories & tags can be made hierarchical

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

CATEGORIES VS. TAGS

CATEGORIES
Allow for broad grouping of topics Required: each post must be assigned to at least one Can be hierarchical

TAGS
Allow for finer details/description of topics Optional Are not hierarchical

Used on Wordpress.com to help others find your content

Used on Wordpress.com to help others find your content

EXAMPLE: CATEGORIES VS. TAGS

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

CATEGORY EXAMPLE
PAGES

CATEGORIES

CATEGORY EXAMPLE (CONTD)

http://mashable.com/category/facebook/

WIDGETS
Snippets of code/function that can be placed in the page Can be placed in sidebars and/or footers WordPress.com provides MANY widgets automatically Types of widgets vary

LETS CREATE A SITE!

Objectives
Write new pages Write new posts Make front page static Change the theme Apply a header graphic Menu navigation Widgets Working with comments Users & their roles
Reminder: Back to Live Dashboard

WORDPRESS.COM IS A COMMUNIT Y
Social Features with other WordPress Blogs

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

WordPress Forums when you have questions

http://wordpress.org/support/

WordPress-focused websites & blogs

Lorelle on WordPres - http://lorelle.wordpress.com/ WPBeginner - http://www.wpbeginner.com WPTuts - http://wp.tutsplus.com/

Misc.
State of the Word 2011 - http://wordpress.tv/2011/08/14/matt mullenweg-state-of-the-word-2011/ Denise Barrett Olsen (Moultrie Creek) WP 101 Blog posts http://moultriecreek.us/gazette/?series=wordpress-101 Genealogy Society Webmasters Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/GenSocWebmasters/

UNTIL NEXT TIME

Part 2: Dissecting the Dashboard June 25th
Delve further into the WordPress Dashboard Switch to WordPress.org and compare features

Email: taneya@gmail.com
www.twitter.com/taneya www.taneya-kalonji.com