So you were told to make a website How to use WordPress to make a website

Contact In person: Visit our technology support desk. Email: rob.horlacher@uleth.ca

Learning Objectives Learn the difference between frontend coding languages Learn the positives and negatives about creating your own WordPress site versus using the WordPress site the University provides you. Learn the ins and outs of WordPress.

A video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT0Lh1eYk78

What is WordPress? CMS (Content Management System) – This means it is easy to create a website. WordPress is used to create blogs and websites without the use of user coding (although it is possible to use customized code inside of it).

ULeth WordPress vs. Personal WordPress https://blogs.ulethbridge.ca/ - Free accounts are created for ULeth users which have a greater control of privacy settings but less control of the functionality of your site than signing up for an account on your own. http://wordpress.com – Users can either create free or paid accounts. Signing up for your own WordPress site allows for you to create as many sites as you wish as well as gives you greater functionality and design options. Task: Go to https://blogs.ulethbridge.ca and log onto your account with the “sign in” option on the page. On the second page that appears, you will want to choose the top option.

Dashboard This is where you will be able to control the look, functionality and content of your website. The main sections that will be controlling your website are the following sections: Posts - This is how you will add/edit posts to your blog. Media – This is how you will add/edit images, videos and audio files to your website. Pages – This is how you will add/edit pages to your website. Appearance – This is how you will update the design and functionality of your website. Task: Go to your dashboard

Themes Themes provide a quick way to style your site. Unfortunately, the U of L WordPress sites do not provide the user with many choices. Something else to keep in mind with Themes is that they will give you different customization options. For example, some will give you the ability to change header photos and some won’t. To change your theme, click “activate” on whichever theme you want to use. Task: Activate your favorite theme

Add New Post When you add a new post you have the option to create in either the “Visual” or “Text” interfaces. Visual – Provides the user with an interface that works a lot like Microsoft Word. Text – This option allows the user to input their own code to create the body of a webpage. Having a basic understanding of HTML will help with this. Prior to publishing a post, make sure you set your visibility as well. Visibility determines who is able to view your page. The options are: Public – Viewable by everyone Password protected – Viewable by everyone with a password to your page. Private – Viewable only by you. When creating a post, you are also given the option to sort it into a category. Clicking “Publish” will make your post live. Task Fill in the title and body of a post with something. Set the visibility to private. Publish your post.

Upload New Media Adding media can happen in two ways: Adding with the +New button at the top of the dashboard or within the media subcategory Adding when you are in the post/page you would like to add media to. Playlists/Galleries can be created from the media items (images, audio files, video files) that you add to WordPress. Playlists/Galleries can only be created from the Page/Post media add function. Task: Add an image either from the internet or your computer.

Add New Page When you add a new page you have the option to create in either the “Visual” or “Text” interfaces. Visual – Provides the user with an interface that works a lot like Microsoft Word. Text – This option allows the user to input their own code to create the body of a webpage. Having a basic understanding of HTML will help with this. Prior to publishing a page, make sure you set your visibility as well. Visibility determines who is able to view your page. The options are: Public – Viewable by everyone Password protected – Viewable by everyone with a password to your page. Private – Viewable only by you. Clicking “Publish” will make your page live. Task: Write something in your title and experiment with the visual interface. Insert the image you added to your media Library. Click Publish (we will delete this at the end).

Navigation / Menus In order to see your navigation menu, you will need to have at least one page added to the menu. To add a page, use the left box and click the checkbox of the page you would like to add. To make your menu active, click the “Create Menu” button New pages can be added to the menu after it has been created Task: Add the pages you created to your menu Click “create menu”

Change your homepage In Settings > Reading you will be able to change your homepage settings. This means that you will be able to set the default page you want people to go to (if you want something instead of your blog feed). If you select the Static page radial option you will get the choice to add one of the pages you already created (if you haven’t created anything this will be empty) or a Posts page. Task: Set one the page you created as your default homepage.

Widgets Widgets provide an easy way to add functionality to your page. Examples of functions of widgets you can use are: An archive of your blog posts An image gallery An audio player Additional Navigation menu If you are using the free personal version of WordPress, there are many more widgets that you can choose from or install to your website. Task: Add two widgets and fill out the content that they ask for. Delete one widget from your sidebar.

Settings General settings Discussion The general settings tab allows you to update items such as: Time zone Site Title Tagline Email Address Discussion Allows you to edit items such as: How people can interact with your blog posts (e.g., whether they can add comments anonymously or not) Whether you get contacted when someone comments on your posts. How comments on your blogs are displayed (e.g., newest to oldest)

Users This subcategory will allow you to add users to interact with your website. You can add users as: Subscribers Contributors Authors Editors Administrators Most if not all of your users should be left as subscribers (this will prevent them from changing your site around) This section also allows you to edit your profile. You can change things like your Admin Color Scheme and your nickname. Task: Change your admin color scheme

What content to remove or delete from this session The pages you created The blog posts you created You can delete the menu, although removing the pages will also remove the menu. Any media you may have added (if you changed your header image)

Further Learning W3schools (a great resource if you want to learn how to code) Wordpress 101 Wordpress How-To For Beginners

Items that were not addressed in this presentation Variances on the personal version of WordPress How to code