Getting Your Feet Wet: WordPress Basics that Still Rock

The slides from my talk at the Appleton WordPress Meetup October 2012.

http://www.meetup.com/Appleton-WordPress/events/69730062/

Transcript

1. Getting Your Feet Wet: WordPress Basics that Still Rock by: Patrick Rauland @BFTrick 2012/10/12
2. What is a CMS? • CMS stands for Content Management System • A CMS allows anyone to edit the content of a website
3. Popular CMS
4. Popularity by Percentage Breakdown of websites with a clearly identifiable CMS, according to W3Tech’s survey of the top 1 million domains. Source: http://wp.smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/29/wordpress-cms-crown-drupal-joomla/
5. How is WordPress Different? • Simple • Extra functionality from plugins • Separation from content and design • Backwards compatible • Active community • Active core development
6. What Makes Up WordPress • Themes • Widgets • Plugins
7. Themes • Themes control the look and feel of the site • Thousands of free themes ◦ http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ • Thousands of premium themes ◦ http://themeforest.net/ ◦ http://www.woothemes.com/ ◦ http://www.elegantthemes.com/ ◦ http://www.studiopress.com/ • Child themes allow customization
9. Theme Red Flags • Functionality bundled with Themes ◦ shortcodes ◦ widgets ◦ unique/complex page templates • Infrequent updates
10. Favorite Themes • Free ◦ http://bootstrapwp.rachelbaker.me/ ◦ http://themble.com/bones/ ◦ http://themeid.com/responsive-theme/ • Premium ◦ http://www.studiopress.com/themes/genesis
11. Widgets • Extra functionality • Usually placed in sidebars
14. Plugins • Control functionality • Sometimes they modify the look & feel
15. Plugins Can... • Add analytics • Run backups • Create widgets • Create shortcodes • Create custom post types • Create custom fields
17. Misperceptions & Gotchas • WordPress.org VS WordPress.com • Difference between page & post • How to upload images for SEO
18. .org VS .com • WordPress.org ◦ Contains all the files which you can manipulate to your hearts content • WordPress.com ◦ A hosted WordPress site ◦ Pre-installed themes & plugins.
19. Page VS Post Pages • Static • Can have ◦ child pages • Displayed in a hierarchy Posts • Time sensitive • Can have ◦ tags ◦ categories • Displayed in reverse chronological order
20. How to Upload Images Before Uploading • Name the file After Uploading • Assign alt tag • Assign title