WordPress Basics: Create Your Own Website

Today’s Session  Defining terms  Setting up your site  Creating your first post  Creating your first page  Questions

Why WordPress? You’re in good company: Blogs that use WordPress: The New York Times, CNNThe New York TimesCNN Musicians who use WordPress: The Rolling Stones, Katy PerryThe Rolling StonesKaty Perry Fortune 500 companies that use WP: GM, UPSGMUPS It’s free, easy to use, and easy to learn. So let’s get started!

Important Terms to Know Dashboard Pages Posts Themes Widgets Media

What is your Dashboard? Your dashboard is your main administration page From your dashboard, you can: Create pages Create posts Change the appearance of your site Do any other administrative tasks

What are Pages? Menu-driven divisions of your website Unlike posts, which are displayed on your blog’s front page in the order they’re published, pages are better suited for more timeless content. Common Pages: About Contact me

What are Posts? Posts are your main content and are ideal for blogs Posts are arranged in reverse chronological order This means that the newest posts appear at the top of the page, and each new post pushes down the older posts

Other Terms to Know Themes – the appearance of your page, with colors, sidebars, and text boxes formatted for you Many free themes are available Try Twenty-ten, Twenty-fourteen, (2012, 2013)

Other Terms to Know Media – photos, videos, or other types of non-text items for your site Widgets – pre-formatted items to add to your site, for example: Links to social media (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) Blog stats Pages menu

Let’s get started! Any questions so far? Go to wordpress.com

What’s next? After activating your blog, it’s time to become familiar with your dashboard Left sidebar: The most common tabs you’ll use on the left are: Posts Media Pages Hover over your blog name: This will give you a drop- down menu

Hover over your blog name and this drop- down menu will appear

What’s next? After becoming familiar with your dashboard, it’s time to choose your theme Remember – many themes are available for free Ones to look for: Twenty-fourteen (2013, 2012, 2011, etc.) These are all good to begin with Select one and realize you can always change it later

What’s next? After choosing your theme, decide how you’ll share your blog Lots of options here: You could add a “follow” widget so people can get your new posts delivered to their inbox You could link to social media Go to “Settings” on the left, and then “Sharing” Here you will see many of your options for publicizing your blog

Now it’s time to create your first post:

What’s next? You’ve created a text post; now try posting a photo

Now create Pages Start with two pages: Contact me About me Go back to your Dashboard Hover over “Pages” and then choose “Add New”

Questions?

Find this presentation online at elmlib.org/wordpress

Information from class: Deleting your site: Deleting your account: Password HIDE button not working: This is due to those who were using an IE browser. Using a different browser (such as Mozilla Firefox) will fix this issue. Maximum website size: All wordpress.com blogs/websites come with 3000 megabytes (~3 GBs) of space for storing uploaded files and images. Notifications: How to make entire site private (good when creating site): Linking an Access database with Wordpress: access-database-to-work-with-wordpresshttp://wordpress.org/support/topic/ms- access-database-to-work-with-wordpress Have follow-up questions? Direct them to our Technical Assistants at with “Wordpress” in the subject line.