A bag of tricks for helping you take your wordpress skills to the next level.

1. The Next Level
A few new moves for confident beginners
Wordcamp Buffalo 2013

2. WP for the People
What do you do with Wordpress?
Designers. Developers, Part of Your Job, Personal Project,

3. What do you want your WP
to do for you?

4. Who is this guy?
• GraphicSource.ca – web and graphics since
1998
• WP since 2006
• Hamilton Ontario #Hamont

5. “ In the future the only occupation will be the curation of
information…”
-
Marshall McLuhan
“I don’t necessarily agree with everything I say”
“We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our
tools shape us…”

6. Bag of Stuff
PlugIns
Themes
Frameworks
Other goodies
Code Ahhhhhh!!! – Don’t worry, don’t run

7. What is a plug-in?

8. How do I add one?

10. WP Plugin Repository – A less than perfect place to find a plugin

11. Things may appear in Different Places – you have to dig around a bit
Stuff shows up in different
places.

12. My Default Install List
Plugin Central – All your plugins
Yoast – SEO
Better WP Security – Security Duh
WP3 Total Cache
Contact Form 7
One Click Plugin Updater
Google Analytics

13. Rules of Thumb for Plugins
Careful with overloading too many plugins
Watch site performance
If not in use, disable
Troubleshooting? Start shutting them down one by
one and test
Take some time to evaluate have a plan
Check your site after installing one
Avoid mass installs of unknown plugins

14. What else can plugins-do
All kinds of widgets, photos, calendars,
Booking systems, ecommerce, donations
Sliders, galleries, contests, social media
Wordpress functionality tweaks
Site backups / moves - Duplicator
Podcasting – Blubrry Power Press
Blogging Tools – Inbound Writer (Premium)
Translation / Multi Language

15. More Plugins
Maintenance – close site to outsiders while working on it
No Longer in Directory – are your current plugins?
CSV to SortTable – Sortable HTML table
Invoice King Pro
Customer Area – protected area for client files and
invoices.
Image Widget
Insert Javascript and CSS
Performance Monitoring – GTMetrix for Wordpress, WP
system health.

16. WPPluginsAtoZ.com
Podcast review of Plugins with Marcus Couch
and
John Overall

17. Themes & Frameworks

18. Themes & Frameworks
What is a Theme?
A new suit of clothes for
your WP
Appearance > Themes

19. Themes & Frameworks
Only Free themes from the WP Repository
(other free themes, esp. free premium themes
have been exploited by hacks)
Check Out:
Kraken: nice responsive framework.
Strappress – built on twitter bootstrap framework

20. Mobile is a Must
Responsive Design
Mobile Plugins: WPTouchPro
Any Theme or Framework you buy must have a
mobile solution.

21. Frameworks

22. Don’t Fear Code
HTML / CSS
www.w3schools.com
Why?
Style your text
Move things around
Add some space around text
Jazz it up
<p style=“color:red; font-weight:bold;”> Hello
</p>

23. Bonus Design Tip
Give Your Text Some Space

24. Other Goodies
CMSCommander.com
ManageWP.com
WPengine.com
WAMP / MAMP – Setup WP locally
Layer Slider
Waveaccounting.com

25. [shortcodes]
A small line of code that looks like
[shortcode_name]
And allows you to quickly add functionality
Utilized by plugins

26. So….
Be curious
Try things – Break things, figure out how to fix
Be methodical
Make connections
Share what you know – Give back

27. Happy Travels

28. That’s all folks…
geoff@graphicsource.ca
@geoffcampbell1
@graphicsrouce
www.geoffcampbell.net
www.graphicsource.ca