Today was first day of WordPress class. What I learned — there is so much to learn! Especially for those of us who defaulted to blogspot in the beginning because it was easy. But nothing in life is free, and the cost of easy is the price we pay for lack of functionality.
Time to mature with the process.
I don’t live in easy, I live in the world of busy – but when you’re busy, it’s nice to visit easy once in awhile. Hopefully my simple lessons here will get you functionally operational. That’s a good place to start.
Warning: This post is for the beginners only. Html — I thought we were going to have a warm breakfast cereal before we started. I googled widget and plugins while the instructor turned his back. Then my mouth dropped open when instructor Bob said it took him 9 months to build his site! (bobwp.com) I can see why, this is a growth process.
This introductory class was great for someone like me with zero experience — to build a house, you need a solid foundation. We laid the framework, now it’s up to me to play with it to lock it in cement.
We did a pretty good job of learning “how to” get started.
Dashboard ▶ Settings
Starting point: Dashboard. Then Settings. Settings drop down menu will step you through the initial, but essential, tasks that will make your life easier. Most are self explanatory, and have default settings. We breezed through these pages, with a couple significant notes.
Dashboard -> Settings brings up important options
Note: There is a little button in the top right on many of these pages “Screen Options.” Click on it to see what you can do with the screen that you happen to be on. “Ahh, now I see the light.”
Note: At the bottom of each page you must “save” before going onto the next link.
What do all the settings mean?
General: Self-explanatory. You will post your Title and your Tag line.
Writing: Size of post box; 20 seemed to be a good number.
Reading: All about Pages—Static verses Post.
Note: Page is static such as a website. Post is like a blog. This is where you want to select the front page to be static if you don’t want the blog up first. Post is default, so you’ll need to change that.
Discussion: The question here was to moderate comments or not. My concern was spam, and unwanted negative comments against my company. We have the ability to black list people with less than desirable things to say by filling out the form below. I also selected to hold a comment in cue if there are one or more links. This too will reduce spam.
Media: Make sure the Full URL path to files is blank.
Permalinks: Not sure what this is, but apparently WP added a new feature: Post name, and this is the selection you want.
Permalinks can be confusing to those new to the plaform
Time to pop up to pages and make something happen.
Pages: “Add New”
Know this: Bullets, formatting etc. is different between themes. So, when you write… check your theme to see if it’s what you want. (Theme class is next week) Check the preview as you work. But the moral of this comment is—Paragraphs, Headings, bullets… etc are all Theme Related. Pick a good one, and stick with it.
Huge tip: Your tool bar should have two lines. If it doesn’t there is a selection – far right – Click on it and that will open the second line of commands. Nice!
Post/Page Editing Toolbar
Everything is self-explanatory here except a comment about links.
Highlight what you want to link to, obvious. But then the second link button will determine if the link takes the person away forever, or once they go to the link, they can close and return. I’m thinking this is a good feature to know.
"Open in new window" will force a new window or tab
Then that funny little symbol right next to the link buttons, that’s great for a teaser. Place a link in your post than the reader only sees the tease and they can go read more.
Insert more (used for excerpt teasers)
The link title:
A title is like a teaser. A reader will see the text when they hover over a link
Paragraph enables you to highlight text for a header. I like this and used it on my first page.
Paragraph options in the post editor
You can type right into the body of the text. But, there are two areas on the bottom row of the tool bar where you can paste your text. If you are copying and pasting, use one of them.
The T in side the box will strip all formatting.
The W for the word will supposedly remove all of words invisible codes.
I write in word and learned today that there are hidden codes that play havoc with posts. I have wasted hours with blogspot trying to figure out how to fix the ghost that has infiltrated my posts to no avail, other than rewriting them. Now I know it’s not my imagination.
Double Spaces: As you type in the text box, when you hit enter, to return, to go to the next line, the program automatically creates a double space. One option to fix this is to select HTML and delete the space. The other option (on a MAC… not sure on a PC) is to hold the shift key while selecting return. This second, and much more fearless option, was brought up by a student. Once again proving, the teachers are always learning.
Never Underline! Why? It looks stupid.
There isn’t a tab key. To tab, select the return button. The un-return button appears once you you’ve returned, to undo what you just did.
Note: You do not want comments on a “Page,” those belong on a post. Deselect the comment box here. I struggled looking for a master no comment button, but it makes sense this selection is on each page.
As you write text in your page, make sure you select “Update.” This is the same as save. Then slightly above you can preview your changes.
Speaking of update. It was recommended that you update your site often. Things break, and so do plugins. There is an online, $75/year service. Might be something to google.
As I’ve been writing this, I’ve been playing with my home page. The theme I’m using is Twenty Eleven 1.3 by WordPress. It’s simple, functional and I think I may just stick with this.
To have some creative fun, select Appearance and notice the drop down box. Background enables you to change a color, or add a photo to the background. Header is the banner photo. I worked with numerous photos, and colors and was able to navigate this with ease. The best way to see what looks good is just do it.
So far, my home page was a success! Looks like this is not so challenging after all, just time consuming. I know there is so much more to learn, and it’s nice to have backup support for those questions along the way – I’m sure I’ll come up with many more.
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About Karlene
Marty has been involved with online application development for a number of years and has worked with large scale applications both as a coder and project manager. He is currently actively contributing to 7 blogs and maintains over 300 websites. 
Ken has been developing software solutions and managing IT projects for over 20 years. Ken has a computer science degree and, although his focus was previously on Windows based software, his focus is now on blogging and other online projects.
Nice post, Karlene. Yet another journey for you!
There are about a hundred points I could make… but I’ll only make a few.
First, when copying text from Word to WordPress, I’ve always written in notepad and then copied to Word for a spell-check. It’s just as easy writing in Word (without formatting) and then “saving as” text. You would then copy text over to your visual editor and apply all necessary formatting. There are a few ways of doing it… but none easier than starting with notepad or a text editor to start with.
Re your spam worries, Akismet is included with every WordPress default installation, but it does require a little work on your part to get an API key (from here: http://akismet.com). It’s the very first plugin I activate on any site. It’ll recognise spam and filter it away based on conditions common to nonsense posts. Every time you mark a comment as spam, the remote system will learn from its mistakes and then apply scrutiny to other comments with the same definition. You’ll probably learn about it next week. It stops at least 99% of all the crap on most of my sites, and it filters away very few genuine posts (if any).
Permalinks are simply an easy way of customising the URL structure of your blog. You’ll note that – in terms of what each post address looks like – I go by way of
internoetics.com/year/mm/dd/post-name. It was set up some time back and I’ve come to regret my decision in minor ways. When I installed your site, I set it up asKarlenePetitt.com/post-name(not the absence of the date.. this is the ‘post name’ option). The URL is shorter and tends to maintain currency – even when it’s a little dated – by virtue of the fact there’s no indication of when it was written in the URL. The only reason I haven’t changed this site over to the new permalink structure is because I didn’t want to worry about redirects… and I didn’t want to lose Twitter counts, FB shares etc that are all attached to a very specific address.In a few months I’ll be starting a new site at BeginnerBloggers.com. I’ll guide new bloggers like you through every single step of the journey in a language that you’re likely to understand. Internoetics has always been for people that have overcome that initial learning curve.
There’s lots to learn. You’ll love it. Enjoy!
There are different blogging communities and different views on blogs. The traditional view is one of control and limiting input and feedback. The collaborative view is one of creating blogging communities and encouraging interaction. Each blogger must carefully decide what type of community they wish to engage – especially if they choose a commenting system.
If you wish to have an active commenting community, Akismet is simply unusable because it censors your best commenters. Because of that and for other reasons, there are three comment systems commonly used: CommentLuv, Disqus, and Livefyre – and each of them can limit but not completely control spam comments.
CommentLuv is what friendly bloggers who believe in paying it forward use and I highly recommend it to those who want to create a better world for all. I will link this comment to a post that explains what CommentLuv is and how it creates community and supports small businesses and local economies.
Livefyre is favored by those who want to get more than they give and I have personally seen it censor controversial content when trying to share using their function for that. I am opposed to censorship and selfishness so avoid commenting in Livefyre blogs which means I rarely read or share them either.
Disqus is middle ground and some bloggers install both Discqus and CommentLuv so their commenters can choose which to use.
Facebook also has a commenting system, but I would definitely avoid that because if they decide to delete your account – which they sometimes do for no reason (just search for Facebook account deleted to read the horror stories) – you would lose your commenting system and probably all your comments and replies, too.
Each blogger should visit the popular blogs in their niche that use each commenting system to see where they best fit and whose audience would also be theirs. Each system has pros and cons and only the individual blogger can decide for themselves which fits their ethical standards and world view.