Beyond the 5-Minute Install: A Guide to Setting Up and Maintaining Your WordPress Site
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The DYK (Did you know) for DIY. WordPress can be a great platform for anyone to create a website. It’s easy to install and and create content with. But what about all the other “stuff” you eventually realize you should know? Domains, hosting, themes, plugins, best practices….is your head swirling yet? This talk will cover things people say they wish they knew when they started.
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Beyond the 5-Minute Install: A Guide to Setting Up and Maintaining Your WordPress Site
- 2. A bit about me • Front End Developer, self-taught • 7+ years experience with WordPress • Big on community (Meetups and Camps) • Teach computer programming to kids • Need a new profile pic • Slightly obsessed with purple, tea, Brit TV, and animals
- 3. Assumptions • You have heard of WordPress • You are using the self-hosted version of WordPress • You know how to create content (add pages, posts, media, etc) • You know what a house is
- 4. The 5-Minute Install • Most host providers have a pretty simple process to install WordPress • You can also install WordPress manually, with the famous 5-minute Install • It’s like signing the final documents and getting the keys to your new house. • But there are several things that are important to do both before and after to ensure your site is well built and serves you well
- 5. What we will cover today • Domains • Hosting • Themes • Plugins • Other fun stuff • Each of these could have it’s own workshop or even conference.
- 7. Domains and Hosting • You will need to purchase both a domain and a hosting plan. • Some companies offer both, others focus on one • No “right” option, just the one that works best for you
- 8. Domains • Your website’s address is the domain. It is how people find your site • yourwebsite.com • $10-30/yr • Email, ftp, calendar, etc • OWN IT!
- 9. Hosting Your host is where you store the files for your website. Or in house terms, it’s the land you build your house on. • Start small, grow as needed • $3-$50+ per month, discounts for annual or multi-year • Recommendation: don’t pay for multiple years
- 10. Things to consider about hosting • To share or not to share? • Not all plans are the same • Resource limits • Add-ons: SSL, CDN, email, etc • Generic or WP specialist
- 11. Make it pretty and functional
- 12. Themes • Framework, layout and overall style • Where to find themes • Paid or free • All-in-one themes • Parent and child themes • Keep branding consistent
- 13. Plugins • Add functionality • Consider: • Who made it • When was it last updated • How many downloads • Reviews?
- 14. Common plugins • Security • Backups • Anti-spam • Caching • Social media icons • Sharing buttons • SEO • Ecommerce • Membership areas • Courses • Page builders • More blocks • Image optimization
- 15. Don’t forget
- 16. Images • Like pictures hanging on your walls….shouldn’t be too big for the space • Choose the right size • Optimize • Make accessible with alt-text
- 17. Security: Lock your doors! Security is important, even if you think “nobody cares about my little old site” • Only as good as the locks you use • Don’t use “admin” • Strong passwords • Limit login attempts • Update update update
- 18. Backups • Automate Backups • Wp-content files • Database • Store backups off-site • Locally on your computer • Dropbox, Drive, etc • Keep a few versions on hand • Lots of free plugin options
- 19. Maintenance • Don’t let your website fall apart! • Stay current with updates • Security fixes • Updated code • General improvements
- 20. Connect with me Christina Workman hello@christinaworkman.ca Amethyst Answers @amethystanswers
- 21. Questions?
- 22. Thank you
Editor's Notes
- paid upgrade of .com will apply in some instances Provide link or options for how to use Wordpress
- Each topic will be covered in a broad way, things you should know to help you make decisions, rather than making decisions or diving deep.
- I have found lots of people have troubles in the beginning understanding the difference between domains and hosting. Are they the same thing, which one is which, do I need both? Where do I get them? Same company or no? You can get them at the same company, but it’s often recommended that you don’t. Some companies only offer one, and other companies offer both but really specialize in just one. Example, lots of domain registrars will offer hosting, but in myexperience they aren’t typically well suited for WordPress sites.
- Domains: typically minimum one year, advisable to register more if you can. Usually between $10-30/yr depending on extension (.com, .ca etc). Fancy ones can cost more the longer it’s registered, the more google trusts you aren’t going to disappear overnight. Your domain is just the site.com part (not the https;//). With this you can also set up things like email (similar to letter mail: your name at the address you live) and other stuff Make sure you are the owner of your domain, not your developer. When you register a domain name, you provide your address, phone and email. As a default, this information is PUBLIC, available for anyone to see. If you would prefer this information not be accessible, you can pay to make it private. You can also add other contacts to your domain registration, which can be beneficial if you someone is helping you with your site,
- Host providers offer a variety of plans for storing the files of your site. When you are starting out, a smaller plan is usually fine for a simple site. Ecommerce, extensive photo galleries, membership sites use more resources, and may benefit from a bigger plan. If you aren’t sure, you can always start small and upgrade later. They are always happy to take more money from you! Resources = you can keep adding on to your house, but if your land isn’t big enough, you’re going to have problems. You may need to move or purchase the land next to yours Hosting can range from $3 to $50 and even more for complex needs. You can pay per month, but usually it’s a bit cheaper to pay for an entire year. Some hosts offer even greater discounts if you pay for several years upfront. I advise against this, even if it seems like a deal. Sometimes hosting companies can be like phone companies, and for various reasons, you may decide you want to switch. If you have paid for 2 more years, you may not want to switch because you’ve already paid. You won’t get a refund.
- Hosts will usually ask if you want to purchase add ons. Most of the time, these are not necessary. Remember they will always be happy to take more money from you later Provide some options for all types of hosting: flywheel, wp engine, godaddy, greengeeks, site ground, bluehost, kinsta Things to consider before deciding on a host provider: not all plans are the same. Different resources and extras Not all companies are the same: some are more generic and others are WordPress specific. WP specific companies are going to be tailored to the specific needs of WP. Others need to have settings that are common to everything. Lots of the cheaper hosting is on a shared server. This means there are other websites being hosted in the same place with yours. Sort of like having roommates. There’s nothing wrong with roommates, but you need to be aware that they are there, and can have an impact on your site. They will share the same ip address as you so if they get the ip address blacklisted, your site will be blacklisted. If they get hacked and allow access to the server, your site could also get hacked. These are worst case scenarios, but you should know the risks. I didn’t mind having roommates when I was younger, but now I have a family, I don’t want strangers in my house. Be aware of various resource limits. How will your chosen host handle a sudden increase in traffic to your site? Will it give you a temporary increase to help you out, or will your site crash? SSL should be a given now. If you don’t have an SSL certificate (https), get one. Most companies offer an SSL certificate free of charge. CDN does NOT mean Canadian. Content Delivery Network. This essentially stores your website files on a bunch of servers around the world, so they are accessed quicker. Helps with speed. Some hosts offer email. Some are free, some are not. You can also use Zoho or GSuite, etc
- Themes: where to find, how to choose, paid vs free, all in one, parent child or additional css section WordPress sites use themes to define the style (design) and some functionality of the website. A default theme comes pre installed, and there are thousands of themes you could choose from (or have one custom created) There are several places to find themes. The first place people tend to look is the Theme Repository, which can be found online and also directly through your wp dashboard. These themes have been reviewed by the WordPress community and have been approved by meeting certain minimum standards. There are also other places online to find themes. Other repositories like Theme Forest, some companies that focus on theme building like Genesis or Elegant Themes. And you can find random people who have made their own themes but haven’t contributed them anywhere else. In all of these places you will find some themes are free and others will need to be purchased. Be aware when purchasing if it is a one-time fee or a yearly fee. There are different types of themes. Some are fairly straightforward and need coding experience to make more than minor enhancements. Others are created with tons of features built in to give you lots of options. Pros to all in one type themes, all those options make it easy for you to a make an extra cool site, but the flip side of that is in order to provide all the functionality you could possibly need is that you. Rarely actually need all that functionality, and therefore end up with a theme that has lot of extra and unnecessary code. Themes can have an affect on load speeds, so this is also one of those things to be aware of at the beginning whenever possible. We often get asked about how to improve SEO AFTER a site has been built, but for best result, these things should be considered at the beginning. An important concept to be aware of from the start is that of parent and child themes. One of the important best practices with WordPress is that you never make coding changes to the original theme. Instead, you create a child theme, which is linked to the original or parent theme, and make any changes or additions there. The reason for this is that if you make changes on the original theme and then there’s an update, you will lose all your customizations when you update. Recently, a new option has been created if you only have CSS (style) changes: the Additional CSS setting. This is great if you aren’t able to access your theme files directly for whatever reason, or if you just have a few changes. It won’t be overridden by updates. If you have a lot of customizations to do , I still recommend implementing a child theme. There are coding requirements for houses, but not for themes. Make sure your contractor/theme builder is reliable Al Be sure to see when it was last updated and what version of WP it has been tested with. Try to use themes from reliable sources. Style guide….theme…once you have your colours etc set, don’t randomly change things (like making text pink for no apparent reason other than you like it) BRANDING There are standards that people expect. Contact information should be easy to find (commonly last item on menu, info in top right corner or footer), links should be identified. Don’t try to be creative simply for the sake of being different. You will end up confusing people. e.g. doorknobs go on the side of the door that opens. If you put the doorknob in the middle of the door, you could still open the door, but people would be confused and wouldn’t instinctively know which way the door will open.
- Plugins add extra functionality. Like a stove allows you to cook things in your house Like themes there are paid and free. there is a repository, etc. There are thousands of plugins to choose from, almost guaranteed there’s one for whatever you need. But how do you choose from so many? -is the developer reputable When was the last update? -how many people have downloaded it -how are the reviews? Not just the stars, but what do people actually say?
- Images. So simple, yet so much room for improvement. WordPress makes it easy to add images to your website. But that doesn’t mean you should just upload the image without making some changes first. Consider images you have taken on your phone…the better quality the image, the bigger the file. And if you are using photos from a decent camera…those files can be huge. These big images take a lot of time to load on a webpage. There are a few things you can and should do before you upload an image. First, scale it down. There is no need to have a 4000px wide image on your website. Most people aren’t using mega sized screens to view your website. Laptops, tablets and phones are more likely. So resize your image to a size that makes sense. If your image is only going to be presented as 400px, then resize it to 400px before uploading. Once you have your dimensions sorted out, the next step is to optimize that image. You can do this online with sites like tinypng.com. There are also a number of plugins that will do this for you when you upload or even after, like tiny png, smush, ew something, but if you can optimize it before uploading, you’ll save some resources. Another important step when adding images is to use alt-text. You’ll see this field in the media upload and edit screen, and it’s used to improve accessibility. Not everyone can see your picture. They could be using a screen reader, which doesn’t understand pictures (neither does google btw). So be sure to include a description of the image in alt text. This is also extremely useful if you include text in an image (not recommended).
- It’s not the size or importance of your site that hackers care about. They just want “fresh meat” -don’t use admin as a user name. This is the #1 username attempted with hackers. -strong passwords. Generally, it’s not people trying to guess your password, but rather a bot hammering away at your login form trying different passwords pulled from lists or randomly generated. The stronger the password, the harder it is for a bot to get in. -limit login attempts. If you have a limit of 3 attempts, those bots get locked out and can’t keep trying. -keep everything updated….just like safe crackers will always figure out how to break into the newest safest safe, hackers are always looking for holes in code. Updates often implement patches to those holes. -some host providers also have extra security systems in place to protect your site and their servers.
- It’s important to keep backups of your site, specifically the contents of the wp-content file and your database. The content file is where your theme, plugins and media files live. The database it where your content and settings are stored. Typically these are the only files that you will have changed on your site, so as long as you have these, you can recreated your site anytime anywhere. Automate backups at regular intervals depending on how often you make changes (weekly daily monthly) As with any important information, you should keep at least one copy, if not more. Some hosts will offer backup service. If it’s free, it’s good to have, but you should also keep a copy off-site and even offline. The more control you have over your backup files, the better. Files on the same server as your site can be corrupted by the same hackers that got into your site, rendering the backup useless. Sometimes accidents happen and your host-stored files could have an issue or be deleted. Etc etc. I don’t recommend paying for backups because there are so many free ways to save your backups. Lots of plugins available. Some options include emailing the files, or sending them to other online storage like dropbox or google drive. also, keep a few backups on hand. again, you never know when a file will be corrupt or you need something from a previous file.
- Code standards evolve over time (the joy of technology) and WordPress is always updating, improving, expanding. B