Sierra College Community Education (Kaleidoscope) class. Feb. 12th 2013. Rich Webster.

1. Wordpress 101
marketing your business with…
the power of blogging.
Monday, February 11, 13

2. What is this class?
• You’ll Learn how Wordpress works
• Modern marketing principles mixed
in so you understand why
Wordpress works
Monday, February 11, 13

3. What you get...
• An overview of:
• What Wordpress is
• How it works in the Internet
Ecosystem
• How it integrates with social media
Monday, February 11, 13

4. Who are you?
• Why have you chosen to take this
course?
• Why Wordpress?
• What is your business?
• What level user are you?
Monday, February 11, 13

5. How hard is this?
• What’s your background?
• What’s your ambition?
• Recipes vs. Concepts
• Yes, some concepts are HARD
★ but you’ll need them!
Monday, February 11, 13

6. How to be successful
with Wordpress...
• Be ACTIVE. Work at it every week.
• Get help, if you need it:
• Grammar, Style (can you write?)
• Images, photography
• Ideas... Customers and Employees
Monday, February 11, 13

7. Mistakes WELCOME!
• It’s all fixable.
Questions WELCOME!
• It’s about you getting the info you need.
Monday, February 11, 13

8. Wordpress
What it is...
What it is not.
Monday, February 11, 13

9. The Internet Ecosystem
• Once mostly informational,
increasingly functional
• Is made up of “services”...
• “The Web” is just one of those services
Monday, February 11, 13

10. It’s made up of...
A bunch of content
Might be:
• Personal expression
• Educational publishing
• Government info & services
• Mostly business, for marketing
Monday, February 11, 13

11. Business on the web...
is mostly static marketing content:
• About <the business>
• Contact form
• Location, Directions, Phones
• Products and/or Services
These are: “Brochure Sites”
Monday, February 11, 13

12. Web businesses...
• Websites that ARE businesses
• E-commerce (buy stuff online)
• Social Networks
• Ad Networks
• Software or Platform as a Service
★ SaaS or PaaS
Monday, February 11, 13

13. Web businesses...
63% of businesses in the US do NOT
have a website...
97% of consumers search online for
businesses!
Monday, February 11, 13

14. Other ways to use the
web for business
• #1: Customer Support
• Market research
• know your potential customers
• follow ‘trending’ topics
• survey users through online
communities
Monday, February 11, 13

15. Most biz sites are
‘cobwebs’
• Haven’t been changed since 2009
• 1999???
• Never show up on search results
• Don’t drive sales
★ They just sit there!
Monday, February 11, 13

16. Why Wordpress?
• The first few answers emerge...
• Acts as ‘brochure’ site
• You can edit your own site!
• Makes contact forms easy...
• Search engines LOVE it.
(more “why” later)
Monday, February 11, 13

17. What is Wordpress?
• It’s a Content Management System
(CMS)...
• content goes into a database
• requested data is pulled out on
demand for viewing (or editing)
• it is wrapped in a ‘template’ for
consistent formatting
• links are managed automatically
Monday, February 11, 13

18. a CMS:
Web Form Database Template
Title Title Body Cat
Body
Category
Web Page
Monday, February 11, 13

19. What is Wordpress?
• It’s a kind of CMS called a blog:
• content is displayed with the most
recent articles (posts) first.
• you can click to view content by...
• category
• author
• date... etc.
Monday, February 11, 13

20. What is Wordpress?
• It doesn’t HAVE to be a blog
• it can have a simple
page-by-page structure
• it can act like a simple
e-commerce system
• it can have forums... etc.
Monday, February 11, 13

21. How does a CMS / Blog work?
• It’s better to experience it than to
try to explain it.
• but basically...
...it takes a URL, and uses it to pull
information out of the database, and display
it in various ways. It gives you tools to put
in media (images, videos, audio files) and
text, link to stuff, and make it available to
people in a friendly, useful way. It can also
communicate to social media, and gather
data, and other nifty things. It’s a
publishing platform. It’s fun!
Monday, February 11, 13

22. What is the Web,
technically?
• Why should you care?
• It’s a protocol, uses http/https, port
80, web server software like Apache
or IIS... all of which we can set aside.
• Uses HTML, which is text, following
a format with tags that look like...
• <html>Dragons!</html>
Monday, February 11, 13

23. What is a web page?
• A text file sitting on a computer. The
computer runs web server software:
<html>
<head>
<title>The Title</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>A big headline!</h1>
<h2>...a smaller headline</h2>
<p><strong>Some</strong> <em>text</em>
in the form of a paragraph</p>
</body>
</html>
Monday, February 11, 13

24. Monday, February 11, 13

25. What is a Server?
• It’s a computer, always connected,
with an address that looks like:
• 128.56.24.0
• It runs server software, perhaps for
email, web, database, file transfer...
Monday, February 11, 13

26. Types of Servers...
• Email Server Software (IMAP, POP,
SMTP servers, MX records, Ports 25,
465, 587
• Web Server Software (Apache, IIS,
etc., Port 80, 8080)
• Database (MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.,
Port 3036)
• IRC, FTP, and other TLAs you (may)
never have to worry about...
Monday, February 11, 13

27. Domains
• Domain Name Servers (DNS) look at the Top Level Domain (TLD)
like .com, .net, .biz, etc. and pass to...
• the Nameserver assigned to the Second-Level Domain, like
“richoid” or “google” or your domain name.
• That may point to another DNS server, or directly to a specific
server address, which is a number like 123.213.21.0 called an IP
address.
• The IP address may point to a specific computer running server
software. Based on the port and other info, it may be directed to a
specific type of software. That software will look for certain files
which may be some text or a script or a program which returns
information. Some is used only by machines, some is for humans.
Monday, February 11, 13

28. Subdomains
• www...
• most people think all websites start
with www. But that's just an optional
thing. It can be any word or number
combination*
• So...
• www.richoid.com
• sub.secondlevel.toplevel
Monday, February 11, 13

29. And to the right of that...
www.richoid.com/directory/file.html
And to the left of that...
http://www.richoid.com/directory/file.html
https://www.richoid.com/directory/file.html
Monday, February 11, 13

30. But wait...
• Wordpress can make urls that look like
www.richoid.com/?p=123
• The “?” tells a script on the server to go
the the DB and do something
• In this case, go to the DB and get “post
#123”
Monday, February 11, 13

31. Even better...
• Wordpress can make urls that look like
www.richoid.com/postname/
• The “postname” is the title of your post,
like: top-10-reasons-to-buy-a-top-hat
• This is big-time Search Engine Mojo
(more on that, later).
Monday, February 11, 13

32. Review:
• Your website is on a server:
— a computer with special software
• You get to it with a URL:
— protocol//sub.domain.tld/dir/file.html
— http://www.richoid.com/about/me.html
• The domain is registered; on a DNS server
• An HTML file + images make a web page
Monday, February 11, 13

33. Why Wordpress
VS.
Something Else
Monday, February 11, 13

34. Other Options
• There are hundreds of CMS solutions
• Wordpress is usually compared with:
• Joomla (similar to WP)
• Drupal (more powerful than WP)
• These are both open-source solutions
that are based on PHP and MySQL and
have strong, vibrant communities.
Monday, February 11, 13

35. Power vs. Simplicity?
• WP is relatively easy for users
• WP is powerful, especially for
developers (like me).
• You control it (unlike Facebook, G+,
Posterous, etc.)
• It’s “Open Source”
Monday, February 11, 13

36. Open Source is...
• All the code is visible, and can be
modified by a developer.
• Closed code is ‘compiled’ and can’t be
viewed or modified.
• “Open” means thousands of people can
work on it, improve it, and extend it.
• If your expert drops dead, you can find
someone else who can work on it.
Monday, February 11, 13

37. Wordpress is good...
• Thoroughly documented
• Frequently improved
• Clean architecture
• Core is separate, shared with all sites
• Themes define the user experience
• Secure as anything ever is, fixed fast
when new ‘exploits’ are found
Monday, February 11, 13

38. Why not?
• It doesn’t have complex user roles
• It doesn’t do complex page layouts well
• You might need a specific functions WP
doesn’t have.
• Consider Drupal...
Monday, February 11, 13

39. Reason #1: Wordpress is
SEO Catnip...
• People at Google help develop it
• It has lots of hidden attributes that
make it ideally ‘semantic’
• Google takes cues from how it works, it
takes cues from how Google works.
• ...more later
Monday, February 11, 13

40. Will this be a good choice
in the future?
• Over 60 million users
• A very strong community
• Devotion to open source
• ...so, probably.
★ But the net changes fast!
Monday, February 11, 13

41. Why Blog?
Monday, February 11, 13

42. What makes blogging
special?
• Blogging serves people, but it also
serves machines: Search Engines
Monday, February 11, 13

43. Blogs Serving People...
• people get to a site occasionally, not
regularly
• they want to know what's current, first.
But then they want to know the “back
story”, history, or story line.
• whether they are back after a week or a
month, they can scan what has
happened since they last visited.
Monday, February 11, 13

44. Serving People...
• they can scan and then 'drill down'
easily
• they can search, easily (content in DB)
• they want consistent, easy navigation
• they want to find out about new things
through other channels:
★ Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, RSS
Monday, February 11, 13

45. Serving Search Engines
★ Search Engine Optimization: SEO
• There's more than meets the eye:
Search Engine 'spiders or bots'
consume information too.
• Google tries to find and judge info the
way people do, or better
• It looks at the URLs, HTML, page
structure, relationships to other
websites
Monday, February 11, 13

46. Serving Search Engines
• Google looks at time and location
• How old is the domain?
• How fresh is the content?
• Where is it published? (geolocation)
• <H1>, <H2>, <H3>, <p>, <strong> etc.
• there are special hidden files (XML site
maps) just for them, that WP can generate
(with a plugin).
Monday, February 11, 13

47. Blogging for SEO
Monday, February 11, 13

48. Optimal Patterns
★ Post 2 times/week
• Fresh content
• After a year, you have 100 articles
focused on your business.
• Each article can act as a de facto
“landing page” for a product, a target
market, or a “keyword set”
Monday, February 11, 13

49. Optimal Patterns
★ Keyword-driven content and menus
• Figure out your “Keywords”
• 1-3 word phrases
• describe — or appeal to — your
target audience
• describe your products, services,
brands, community, aesthetics,
humor... think broadly
Monday, February 11, 13

50. How do people describe
your business?
★ Plug ‘em in
• URL:
https://adwords.google.com/o/
Targeting/Explorer?
__c=1000000000&__u=1000000000&i
deaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS
Monday, February 11, 13

51. Keep these in mind
★ Write posts with these keywords
• Monitor the biggies:
• Google Alerts
• Twitter
• etc...
Monday, February 11, 13

52. Your front page isn’t
always your ‘home’ page
★ Customers may land anywhere.
• Based on search or links-in
• What did they come for? Are you using
that page to do a “Call to action?”
• It’ll get traffic soon, but may years
later, too!
Monday, February 11, 13

53. create targeted content:
★write articles about
things that will draw
the right visitors
Monday, February 11, 13

54. Once they’ve arrived
• include calls to action: how to use this
information to act now!
• use energetic and positive writing
• choose who you alienate (if anyone)
• write your headlines carefully (do they
make good tweets?)
Monday, February 11, 13

55. Before they go...
• friend you?
• tweet this?
• sign up for a newsletter?
• buy something?
Monday, February 11, 13

56. The Takeaway...
Monday, February 11, 13

57. What did we learn on the
show tonight, Craig?
• There’s a thing called the Internet...
• If you use Wordpress, you can have a
great hub for your brand
• A Blog is a CMS is a Website that you
can control without being a ‘developer’
Monday, February 11, 13

58. What did we learn on the
show tonight, Craig?
•URLs really matter
•You can’t avoid HTML forever
• Keywords drive SEO
• Content tuned to your target audience
will deliver traffic.
• Once you have someone looking, get ‘em
signed up so you can bring ‘em back.
Monday, February 11, 13

59. Next...
• What's your site going to be about?
• What do you want to name it?
• What's a good subtitle? (think
'keywords')
• Do you have a domain?
Monday, February 11, 13

60. Getting your
feet wet....
Monday, February 11, 13

61. First: a tour
• Generic Wordpress Site
• This is the TwentyEleven Theme
Monday, February 11, 13

62. Browser:
• I can recommend Chrome, Firefox &
Safari. I do not recommend the
ubiquitous IE (Microsoft Internet
Explorer) in any version before 9.
• Nonetheless, your visitors will use
them, so you need to look at your site
that way sometimes (back to IE7).
Monday, February 11, 13

63. The Parts of the Theme
• Site Title in Browser Tab
• URL
• Site Title on page
• Navigation
• Post
• Pages
Monday, February 11, 13

64. Anatomy of a Page
• Title
• Content
• that’s all
Monday, February 11, 13

65. Anatomy of the Blog
• Multiple posts, in reverse date order
• Each post exists by itself: the
Permalink
• Posts can be listed by date (archive),
author (archive), search results
(search match), and more.
Monday, February 11, 13

66. The Admin Area
• Your admin area: /wp-login.php
or /wp-admin
Monday, February 11, 13

67. First Steps
Monday, February 11, 13

68. Settings
• Site Title
• Site Description
• Front “Page” or “Blog”?
• Creating a Page
• Creating a Post
Monday, February 11, 13

69. Touring the Editor
• Called “TinyMCE” shared by many
other CMS/Blog platforms.
• This is not a Word Processor, like
you’re used to
• Limited by HTML
• Very basic, but can be extended
Monday, February 11, 13

70. Peek at code...
• Bold uses the <strong> tag
• italic uses the <em> tag
• strikethrough uses the <del> tag
• underlined uses the <span style="text-
decoration: underline;">.
• The old way to do this were the <b>, <i>, <s>, <u>.
This relates to the increasing use of "Semantic"
tagging... The ' style="" ' is an 'inline CSS style',
so it's your first glimpse at CSS.
Monday, February 11, 13

71. Wordpress 101
Links & Images (in a post or page)
Monday, February 11, 13

72. Creating Links
• Go to a page or post
• Highlight text
• Click ‘chain link’ icon
• URLs from other sites
• Open in new window
• Existing content
Monday, February 11, 13

73. Links...
• Find a site to link to, or just type
in http://google.com
• Click the “Open New Window”
checkbox
• submit
Monday, February 11, 13

74. Links...
• Now we’ll link to an internal page
• Highlight some (different) text
• Click the ‘link’ icon
• select a page from the list
• Note the title?
• submit
Monday, February 11, 13

75. Links...
• Know your URL structure:
• http or https
• ://
• subdomain.domain.tld
• /folder/file?argument
• A look at a Google Map URL
Monday, February 11, 13

76. Images...
• Add an image to a post (demo)
• Upload an image or images
• Make a gallery
Monday, February 11, 13

77. Image Formats
• GIF: smallest, best for art, like
logos (unless transparent)
• JPEG: best for photos or other
“continuous tone” images
• PNG: best for transparent logos
Monday, February 11, 13

78. Image Size
• Image in post can be full width
of post area
• 1/2 width (roughly) also good
• Thumbnail is pretty small
(but what automatically is used
in Galleries)
Monday, February 11, 13

79. Image Links
• Images can link to:
• image by itself (media)
• image in a page (attachment)
• image in a lightbox
(requires plugin: jQuery
Lightbox or similar)
Monday, February 11, 13

80. Slideshows
• Require a plugin
(or may be in theme)
• SliderVilla.com is a good
source for slideshow/slider
plugins
Monday, February 11, 13

81. Videos
• Easy to embed from:
• Youtube
• Screencast.com
• Vimeo
• Slideshare... and more
Monday, February 11, 13

82. Videos are HUGE
• Lots of data: let YouTube
(Google) pay for the server
space instead of putting it on
your server
• Also has SEO value:
• YouTube links to your site
• You link to your
YouTube video
Monday, February 11, 13

83. Content
Monday, February 11, 13

84. Content Plan
• Pages vs. Posts
= Static vs. Timely
1. Make a list for your pages
Titles
Basic idea of what goes on each...
Monday, February 11, 13

85. What should be in every
business site*
• Contact Page
• phone, address, map, contact form
• Photos of you, your staff, building?
• Newsletter sign-up
• Testimonials
• Social Links
• maybe an FAQ
Monday, February 11, 13

86. Plan your first 10 posts
• What are the most common questions
customers have?
• What is new in your store, or industry
• The history of industry, products,
people
• Things that prompt discussion...
Monday, February 11, 13

87. Should you accept
Comments?
• People can comment on posts
(or you can block that)
• Should you allow this?
• If you do, should it be ‘hands-off’
• Think of it as a customer-support
channel
Monday, February 11, 13

88. Using Other’s Content
• Most photos & original art/music are
off-limits without permission
• OK to summarize & link including
‘quotes’ from original text.
• Most sites want this... more traffic!
• Most YouTubes can be embedded
Monday, February 11, 13

89. You can do delayed
publishing...
• Write a bunch of posts
• Publish at later date/time
• spread it out
Monday, February 11, 13

90. Cross publish
• Using tools like “dlvr.it”
• http://dlvr.it
• To Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In
• Subscribe2 plugin, MailChimp,
Constant Contact or Aweber
• notifies users via email of new
content
Monday, February 11, 13

91. Links to Social Media
• Link to YOUR Facebook or Twitter
• User’s can “Like” once there...
• AND allow users to post your content
to THEIR Facebook & Twitter, & other
sites as well...
• spread your content far and wide...
it all links back to you!
• “Sociable” plugin
Monday, February 11, 13

92. Other Links-in
• SEO Concept: Link Building
• You want more links to your site
• You want “High Quality” links
• major news sites
• wikipedia
• social media & other blogs
• You want to “disavow” spammy links
Monday, February 11, 13

93. Review
• Post (2x week is optimal)
• Cross post to social
• Schedule posts
• allow people to subscribe to be notified
• allow people to comment?
• allow people to post to social
• write useful stuff
Monday, February 11, 13

94. Custom Appearance & Function
Monday, February 11, 13

95. What is a theme?
• A collection of
• styles
• templates
• functions
Monday, February 11, 13

96. What is a theme?
• May also include:
• plugins
• widgets
• custom admin-area forms
Monday, February 11, 13

97. How to find themes
• Find some you like, don’t buy yet.
• Free themes are fun to play with
• Commercial themes can be a
headache that you feel trapped by...
• Did you spend a lot?
• Is it really going to be easy?
Monday, February 11, 13

98. Custom Themes
• Tools you can use
• Artisteer
• A theme with options in the
Admin – not that easy!
• Genesis, Atahualpa, etc.
• Hire a pro... it’s worth it.
Monday, February 11, 13

99. Custom Theme
Advantage
• No one else looks the same
• It has only those features you
need, none you don’t
• It lets you focus on content
Monday, February 11, 13

100. Custom Theme Samples
• RosevilleHyperbaric.com
• NevadaCounty.com
• BrookDesign.com
Monday, February 11, 13

101. Installing a Theme
• wp-admin > appearance > themes
• Select a theme
• Install & View
• Switch Back
• Demo of “full install” options
Monday, February 11, 13

102. What happens when the
Theme changes?
• Image size issues
• ‘orphaned’ content
• but nothing is ‘lost’
• It might not land in the same
place when the original is
reactivated, though
Monday, February 11, 13

103. What a Theme really is...
In wp-content/
All the stuff that
makes this WP
installation
“yours”
Monday, February 11, 13

104. What a Theme really is...
In wp-content/themes/
All the stuff that
makes this
“Theme”
Monday, February 11, 13

105. What a Theme really is...
PHP files
CSS files
Images
Monday, February 11, 13

106. What a Theme really is...
PHP:
page.php
Monday, February 11, 13

107. What is a plugin?
• Extra functionality, in a tidy
package (hopefully)
• May be simple, or may require
expertise to implement
• Can turn your Wordpress site into a
forum, e-commerce system, or...?
Monday, February 11, 13

108. Adding a Plugin
• Admin > Plugins
• Search or Upload
• Activate
• Keep updated
Monday, February 11, 13

109. Examples of Plugins
• BackWPup
• XML Sitemap
• Sociable
• Gravity Forms
• Subscribe2
• ...and many more
Monday, February 11, 13

110. Hosting
Monday, February 11, 13

111. Major Hosts
• GoDaddy (warning: slow!,
restrictive, problematic, icky)
• HostGator (well liked, basic)
• 1and1 (good host, not great
support, nice interface, dual
hosting)
• DreamHost (old favorite)
• Bluehost (current champion)
Monday, February 11, 13

112. Cheap Shared Account
• Go with any of these hosts (except
GoDaddy), it’ll take you a long way.
• IF lotsa traffic (you wish) you can
upgrade to “Pro” account
• Can support multiple sites/domains
• They take care of a lot of hidden
complexity: Not rocket science; harder
Monday, February 11, 13