Bob Wire
Chérie Newman
Ednor Therriault
Lila Cleminshaw
Sergei Boutenko
V-Tech Auto Repair
W12-030: WordPress-Web Development for the Right Side of Your Brain
This class focuses on using the free open-source software called WordPress. WordPress makes it easy to create and deploy your own professional website. The user interface is designed let you present your business or ideas in an attractive format to the public without having to know complex programs. Learn set up, common uses, how to add plugins and design themes and search engine optimization as well as integration with common free social networking tools like Youtube, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook. No prior knowledge of HTML, web publishing or ownership of an existing website required but you should be familiar with web browsers such as Internet Explorer and programs to format text such as Word.
Fridays, Jan 9-Feb 13
9am – noon
$81 (early bird $76)
| taught throughThe Lifelong Learning Center 310 South Curtis Street Missoula, MT 59801 (406) 549-8765 |
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I’ve had students ask how they can work on Wordpress while not connected to the internet. If you are learning Wordpress and don’t have high-speed internet, you might want to install Wordpress on your PC. This gives you your own sandbox to use for testing out new ideas quickly (rapid prototyping). With a local install, you can add as many wordpress sites as you want.
For example, I have the following:
- singlesite
- multisite
- plugintest
- themetest
- plugintest-multisite
- themetest-multisite
Here are the steps for setting this up on your PC. Continue reading
Share on FacebookGreat tips from Rebecca’s class on eCommerce today.
The popular zenCart store software can be integrated with Wordpress site by using the Fantastico installation module.
WP Robot plugin (not free) – great for autoblogging. The most powerful affliate marketing tool Rebecca knows about. She uses it on her Compare Treadmills site.
Once you get your site up there you can sell your site through flippa.com. Like Rebecca did with GoGreenerTips.com.
Free screencapture program jing. It has a 5 min limit.
Member champ plugin (not free) for subscriptions along with a purchase. You need an Aweber account.
Socializer Plugin – same as what you get with JetPack
Sexy Bookmarks – another social links plugin (sexier)
Tubepress – autogenerating youtube video page
Using Amazon S3 to host content like videos – GoTo
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Here are some more tricks to help with SEO your site that I learned about in Rebecca’s class today:
Plugins
- All in One SEO
- Google XML Sitemaps
- No Duplicate
- SEO Friendly Images (not sure if it works with NextGen Gallery)
- StatPress (same as Stats in JetPack)
- Cbnet Ping Optimizer
- Core Tweaks
- Google Analytics
Add List of Ping Services to Settings -> Writing -> Update Services
Setting -> Permalinks
change to Custom Structure
/%postname%/
or
/%category%/%postname/ – if you’re using categories
Plugin for Cloning site – WP Twin
To find just your pages indexed on Google
search: Â site:<yourdomainname.com>
All-in-one page level settings
Title – will override page title (the link that shows up on Google)
Description – 164 characters (what shows under link in Google)
Tools Used
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To add an Amazon store to your site like I’ve done here.
- Go to Amazon Associates
- Register and setup your account
- Click aStore tab
- Click Add a Store button
- Follow the intuitive instructions for setting up categories
- Finish and copy link
- copy iframe code
- Create a Page on your site for the Store
- switch to HTML mode and paste the iframe code
- Choose a fullpage template
- Publish
- Ken Dawes, The Web Mechanic
Here are some great tips from Ken Dawes’ presentation “How to Improve Wordpress Security“. Ken was a guest speaker in Rebecca Holman’s class More WordPress-Tweaks, Tricks and Marketing Ideas.
Check out Ken’s website for more about his service offerings.
- Delete user “admin” – create a new admin account first
- change first and last name and nickname
- Choose a secure password – don’t use the word “password”
- Login LockDown plugin
- Check your Theme for the tinthumb update
- AntiVirus plugin
- WordPress Firewall 2 plugin – you’ll have to add your own ip address to edit your site
- Block Bad Queries (BBQ) plugin
- Update Unique Keys plugin – logout and log back in again
- Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin – alternative for Akismet
- BulletProof Security plugin
Other non security
- permalinks -custom /%post_id%/%postname%/
- use a 404 redirect plugin if you already had a lot of links
- Core Tweaks WordPress Setup – cleanup first installations (sitemap etc.)
- WP-DBManager plugin – alternative to WP-DB-Backup
- Filezilla - ftp (file transfer protocol) manager – to backup all your media files such as images and pdf’s
Another Security Plugin that is widely used:
- WP Security Scan plugin – set and forget
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In HTML a link tag is called an “anchor” tag. That’s why it start with <a. A is for Anchor.  If you want your link to go to a spot inside a page/post, you put an id in the page/post and then link using the # sign.
Here are the steps:
- Add the id within quotes
<h2 id=”name-can-be-anything-without-spaces”> - Add the link using the # sign
<a href=”#name-can-be-anything-without-spaces”>
This video demonstrates this along with how to add a page that links to an anchor with an id.
http://youtu.be/OtrT0AsTwfo
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The Lifelong Learning Center is offering a class on how to customize your Wordpress Theme.
Nov 7-Nov 30, 2011 – Mondays & Wednesdays 1-4pm – Register Online
Instructor, Nora’s, write-up about the class
—
“Principles of CSS”
Discussion of the following CSS principles:
- Content and formatting are separate functions – and separate code. Ideally, they are in separate files.
- Formatting is uniform throughout the site through the use of external style sheets (files.)
- There are two types of CSS structure.
Here are instructions for how to remove “Leave a Reply” from pages/posts.
- Dashboard
- All Posts/Pages
- Edit
- Uncheck: Discussion – > “allow comments”
If you don’t see the Discussion section:
- Click Screen Options
- Check Discussion box
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F11-030: WordPress-Web Development for the Right Side of Your Brain
This class focuses on using the free open-source software called WordPress. WordPress makes it easy to create and deploy your own professional website. The user interface is designed let you present your business or ideas in an attractive format to the public without having to know complex programs. Learn set up, common uses, how to add plugins and design themes and search engine optimization as well as integration with common free social networking tools like Youtube, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook. No prior knowledge of HTML, web publishing or ownership of an existing website required but you should be familiar with web browsers such as Internet Explorer and programs to format text such as Word.
Fridays, Sept 16 – Oct 28 (no class Sept 30)
9am – noon
$76 (early bird $71)
| taught throughThe Lifelong Learning Center 310 South Curtis Street Missoula, MT 59801 (406) 549-8765 |
|
