Introduction to WordPress
Introduction to WordPress with Michael Boll
WordPress is one of the best website development platforms on the planet. At the end of this course, you will agree with that statement. Well I hope so.
WordPress is the platform of choice at Concordia. It is used to run most of our websites including our main website, ConcordiaShanghai.org.
WordPress powers 25% of the world’s websites now. That is a huge number! So you are in good company as you take the WordPress plunge.
WordPress is an Open Source platform. That means it is free and developed by anybody around the entire world. One day you might want to be a developer for WordPress.
The Open Source nature of WordPress is all powerful because of something called plugins. We will talk much more about that in the advanced WordPress course, but I wanted to tell you a little about them now. WordPress plugins allow for incredible functionality to be added to your websites. If there is something you want your website to handle, chances are someone has created a plugin to help you. Most plugins, and this is great, are free!
I use plugins to help me with:
- Social media
- Photos
- Security
- Podcasting
- Backing my site up
- Fantasy Football
There is a ton more! You can see what is available on the WordPress Plugin Page.
Lastly, there is a great book that I recommend you download . It is called the Easy WordPress Guide. There are free versions of the book, but for less than one dollar, you can get the iBook version or the Kindle version. I say buy one of the paid version to support this book! Check it out.
Lessons
1. Logging in to Your Wordpress Site
Logging in for the first time is a fairly easy thing to do. However, you have to be careful that you login from the right place each time. It is easy to be misled. ;-)
3. Wordpress Dashboard
Welcome to the Wordpress Dashboard. This is where it all starts and where you will begin your Wordpress journey.
4. Creating Your First Post
It all starts with your first post! How exciting! At the end of this lesson you are going to have a place on the interwebs that has your "stuff" on it.
5. Adding Photos and Images
hile text is a great way to communicate, images are what make the web popular and will draw people to look at your page. The eye will nearly always go to an image first before it goes to text. This is likely because back in the cave man days, the nerd that read all those stone tablets instead of looking for the lion that was sneaking up on him, was eaten. But I digress. There are many, many options for how to display an image on your Wordpress page. There are also a ton of plugins that support image creation and display. It might be a little early to talk about plugins right now; you will get to know them more later. As teachers, we love to post images of things happening around the school, places we have been or activities in our classrooms.
6. Creating a Hyperlink
Hyperlinks are what make the web work and what makes the web so successful. Only by easily linking to the content created by yourself and others, can we truly share and communicate in a dynamic and powerful way.
7. Adding Categories and Tags
Using categories and tags is SO IMPORTANT. However, it is usually NEGLECTED by adults and students. By using categories and tags you can bring organization and structure to your website. This won't seem that important in the beginning when you don't have much content, but will be a big deal latter when you have a ton of content and it is all over the place.
8. Changing Your Theme
One of the first things you will want to do on your Wordpress site is explore and change your theme. The theme dictates how your page will look, where the images go, what color your text is, the size of your fonts, the type of fonts etc.
9. Adjusting Settings and Configurations
Setting up your setting is not a very exciting part of Wordpress, but it will answer many of your questions about how to make small changes to your site. For example, this includes the tag line at the top of your website.
10. Editing an Existing Post
Once you start producing content, you are going to find yourself needing to go back and make some changes from time to time. These changes might include privacy settings, category changes, photo changes, text changes, color changes and diaper changes. Um, I am just kidding about the last one.
11. Creating a Page Instead of a Post
This course has mostly focused on creating posts and NOT pages. Posts show up only on the front page and in chronological order. Each new post pushes the old down until it falls onto the second page. I REALLY recommend that you have your students ONLY use pages and not posts. This will make more sense later on when they have a ton of content up there. As long as they categorize and tag it they can take advantage of some of the tricks they can use to organize their site.
12. SUNY Credit Option
SUNY Credit Option: Interested in graduate credit for this course?
13. Post Course Survey
Course Summary:
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