1. Part 1:
WORDPRESS FOR
Learn
GENEALOGISTS the Lingo
June 18, 2012
taneya@gmail.com
www.facebook.com/taneya
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2. WEBINAR SERIES
 Part 1: Learn the Lingo
 Basic familiarity with WordPress, how it works, the terminology
used, WordPress.com
 Part 2: Dissecting the Dashboard – June 25th
 Delve further into the WordPress Dashboard - all the parts are and
what they do; begin to understand the self-hosted version of
WordPress.
 Part 3: Features, Features & More Features – July 9th
 plugins & themes - how to find them, how to choose them; DOs
and DON’Ts; commonly seen in genealogy.
 Part 4: Polishing to Perfection – July 16th
 more advanced - how to tweak themes, maintenance issues, site
analytics

3. OVERVIEW
Background & WordPress Fundamentals
Using WordPress
Hands On: Creating a WordPress.com site
Questions & Discussion

4. BACKGROUND &
FUNDAMENTALS

5. WORDPRESS & ME
My Journey
 1999 - basic HTML; created my first website
 2003 - transitioned to TypePad -- early
blogging software; the appeal for me was that
I could make frequent updates and not have
to code HTML to do it. Paid a monthly fee.
 2004 - Blogger - free Google product
 2007 - WordPress; made the switch because
WordPress of fered more functionality than
blogger; ability to choose more designs for
my site.

6. WORDPRESS & ME (CONT’D)
 2009 – My first GenWeb county site with WordPress;
NCGenWeb site migrated to WordPress
 2011 - Became TNGenWeb State Coordinator – migrated site
to WordPress + several county sites
70+
sites and counting!

7. WORDPRESS BACKGROUND
 May 2003 – WordPress ver sion 0.7
 New releases ever y year – latest is version 3.4
released June 13 th , 201 2
 Initially a blogging platform; as new releases
Matt Mullenweg circa 2008 were developed, transitioned into more than
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Mullenweg just a blogging sof tware, but rather, a content
management system.

8. JAZZY WORDPRESS
Many of the
WordPress
developers share
a love of jazz
music
Every major
release named
after a jazz
musician

9. WORDPRESS IS OPEN SOURCE
 Open Source:
 a philosophy that promotes distribution
 source code is available to the public free -of-charge
 license allows anyone to use the software
logo of the
Open Source Initiative
 WordPress as an Open Source initiative means:
 source code is developed by the community
 hundreds of people work on the code and create additional code to
make WordPress do even more
 you can use it for anything and not pay license fees
―…free software‖ is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think
of ―free‖ as in ―free speech,‖ not as in ―free beer‖. -- http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

10. CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
 Software system that lets you "Content management systems (CMS)
create and manage website place the responsibility of content
content easily with little creation and maintenance squarely in
knowledge of web the hands of non-technical users.“ –
programming and/or markup cmswire.com
languages (e.g. HTML)
 Most use a database to store
information
 Content is presented to
website visitors using a
template

11. DATABASE-DRIVEN
Traditional Model Database-Driven Model
These files have instructions to go
get your content and show it back
these files have your content to you all ―dressed up‖

12. WHY WORDPRESS? IT’S POPULAR
http://yoast.com/wordpress-stats/

13. WHY WORDPRESS? FUNCTIONALIT Y
Plugin
Power
Community Site Design
Content is
King!
Multiple Social
Users Media

14. WORDPRESS SHOWCASE

15. WORDPRESS SHOWCASE

16. WORDPRESS SHOWCASE

17. WORDPRESS SHOWCASE

18. WORDPRESS SHOWCASE

19. WORDPRESS GENEALOGY SHOWCASE

20. WORDPRESS GENEALOGY SHOWCASE

21. WORDPRESS GENEALOGY SHOWCASE

22. WORDPRESS GENEALOGY SHOWCASE

23. WORDPRESS GENEALOGY SHOWCASE

24. USING WORDPRESS

25. GET WORDPRESS
WordPress.com WordPress.org

26. WORDPRESS.COM
Advantages Disadvantages
 free and super easy to set up  190+ themes available which
 all of the technical maintenance you can customize (for a fee),
work is taken care of — setup,
upgrades, spam, backups, but you cannot upload a custom
security, etc. theme
 your blog is on hundreds of  you can’t modify the PHP code
ser ver s, so it’ll always remain
available, even under high traf fic behind your blog
 your content is backed up  you can’t upload plugins
automatically
 limitations on size
 you’ll get extra traf fic from being
a par t of the WordPress.com  limitations on file upload types
community
 you can find like -minded blogger s
using search and the reader
 your dashboard is secure (SSL)
making it even safer to log in on
shared networks
http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/

27. AUTOMATTIC
http://automattic.com/

28. WORDPRESS.ORG
Advantages Disadvantages
 Ability to upload custom  You need a web host (generally
themes costs $7-12 a month)
 Ability to upload plugins  Requires more knowledge &
 Complete control to personal time to run
change & customize  You’re responsible for
 stopping spam
 creating and maintaining
backups of your site
 updating the WordPress
software when new versions
are released
http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/

29. HANDS-ON

30. STARTING YOUR WORDPRESS.COM SITE

31. BUT FIRST……A WORD OF CAUTION
Before you create a site, it is
helpful to have an understanding
of what you want and how you
want it organized.
Make a list of desired features
Browse similar sites for ideas
Draw it on paper

32. WORDPRESS DASHBOARD
( T H E C O N T R O L PA N E L )

33. VIEW THE DASHBOARD
Reminder: Back to Live Dashboard

34. POSTS VS. PAGES
POSTS PAGES
 entries that show up  are stand-alone content
listed in reverse  are not listed by date
chronological order  are not displayed in the
 posts are also displayed RSS feed
in the RSS feed of the
 do not use categories &
site
tags
 use categories & tags
 can be made hierarchical
http://en.support.wordpress.com/post-vs-page/

35. CATEGORIES VS. TAGS
CATEGORIES TAGS
 Allow for broad grouping  Allow for finer
of topics details/description of
 Required: each post must topics
be assigned to at least  Optional
one
 Can be hierarchical  Are not hierarchical
 Used on Wordpress.com  Used on Wordpress.com
to help others find your to help others find your
content content

36. EXAMPLE: CATEGORIES VS. TAGS
http://en.support.wordpress.com/posts/categories-vs-tags/

37. CATEGORY EXAMPLE
PAGES
CATEGORIES

38. CATEGORY EXAMPLE (CONT’D)
http://mashable.com/category/facebook/

39. WIDGETS
 Snippets of
code/function that can
be placed in the page
 Can be placed in
sidebars and/or footers
 WordPress.com
provides MANY widgets
automatically
 Types of widgets vary

40. LET’S CREATE A SITE!
Objectives
 Write new pages
 Write new posts
 Make front page static
 Change the theme
 Apply a header graphic
 Menu navigation
 Widgets
 Working with comments
 Users & their roles
Reminder: Back to Live Dashboard

41. WORDPRESS.COM IS A COMMUNIT Y
Social Features with other WordPress Blogs

42. WORDPRESS RESOURCES
 Wordpress Codex – the help documentation
 http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Lessons
 WordPress Forums – when you have questions
 http://wordpress.org/support/
 WordPress-focused websites & blogs
 Lorelle on WordPres - http://lorelle.wordpress.com/
 WPBeginner - http://www.wpbeginner.com
 WPTuts - http://wp.tutsplus.com/
 Misc.
 State of the Word 2011 - http://wordpress.tv/2011/08/14/matt -
mullenweg-state-of-the-word-2011/
 Denise Barrett Olsen (Moultrie Creek) – WP 101 Blog posts
 http://moultriecreek.us/gazette/?series=wordpress-101
 Genealogy Society Webmasters Facebook Group -
https://www.facebook.com/groups/GenSocWebmasters/

43. UNTIL NEXT TIME
Part 2: Dissecting the Dashboard – June 25th
 Delve further into the WordPress Dashboard
 Switch to WordPress.org and compare features
Email: taneya@gmail.com
www.twitter.com/taneya
www.taneya-kalonji.com