Transcripts
1. Intro : have you thought about starting a block but aren't sure how to go about it? If so, you are not alone. Even professional bloggers, including me, were once in that exact same position. The good news is learning the basics is easy, and once you get started, you'll be an old pro in no time. Hi, I'm Rebecca Livermore, and I'm the author of the Blockers. Quick Guide to Starting Your First WordPress blogged. I wrote this book because a lot of people feel overwhelmed with the idea of starting a block, and much of the information out there about blocking is overly technical. This book is one of my best sellers, and I'm pleased, offered the best of the best information to you here on skill share. In this class, you'll learn why I believe WordPress is the best bloody platform. The difference between hosted and self hosted blog's and how to determine which option is best for you. A clear explanation of the difference between wordpress dot com and wordpress dot or and again, how do you determine which is the best fit for you, based on your own goals and how you're going to use your blonde also show you how to purchase and set up Web hosting, how to set up categories for your block, how to write your first blood post, how to set up pages and then add them to your site navigation, the difference between widgets and plug ins and how to use each of them. And so much more. So if you the hot about starting a blawg, but you weren't sure how or if you started a block, but he really didn't understand. All the ends and outs of blocking in this class is for you. So what are we waiting for? Let's go ahead and dive in.
2. Why WordPress : in this video I get into Why. WordPress. Here's the deal. There are a lot of blogging platforms out there. I know bloggers that use everything from WordPress to blogger, which is Google's blogging platform to squarespace and other platforms that people rave about as well. So why Wordpress simply put WordPress is one of the best blogging solutions out there Now I know that that sounds subjective and to some degree, it ISS, but there are solid reasons for it as well. And here, just a few of them, number one WordPress is open source. So first, let me explain what open source means. Open source refers to software where the code has been made available to anyone that wants to tinker with it. That means that developers can get their hands dirty with WordPress and do what they want with it. With word processes resulted in a huge community of developers and enthusiasts who have created themes, plug ins and many other WordPress related doodads. Now I'll be the first to admit that there are both pros and cons to something being open source. The biggest pro is the amount of stuff that his WordPress related that in some ways is also the biggest con, particularly since some of the options, such as plug ins that have been created, may not always be top quality, since rookies and pros alike can create plug ins and make them available to the general public. At the same time, there are enough quality plug ins and themes out there that you'll never be found wanting. For sound options number to WordPress is easy to learn now. Some people may disagree with me on this, and I understand that when I first started with WordPress, I was a little confused about how to use it. But that has also been the case where I've tinkered with other blogging platforms such as blogger and squarespace. The important thing to keep in mind is to initially focus on the basics, which I will cover in this class, and you'll be up to speed in no time. On top of that, what makes WordPress easy to learn is that since it's so popular, there are a ton of block posts. YouTube videos and other resource is such as this class that explain how to use it. Number three nearly unlimited resource is since WordPress is open source, and since so many people use it, there are seemingly unlimited number of WordPress related resource is, for example, it's not overly difficult to find a WordPress developer or to find WordPress plug ins that can do whatever your mind can conceive when it comes to what you want to have happen on your blogged. Since so many bloggers use WordPress, you'll find that it's easy to connect with other bloggers on this platform who can share their tips and ideas with you and help answer your questions. Number four. You'll be one of the cool kids. Now again, this is a little bit subjective, and I'll admit that when it comes to running a business, being one of the cool kids isn't all that important. Chances are some of the nerdiest people you went to high school with are now some of the most successful. But there's something to be said for being part of the club. I've managed social media and other types of content for various clients, and as part of that, I've often assisted as an admin in Facebook groups and blogging platforms and plug ins, and inevitably come up in these conversations. Many times when people mentioned a specific WordPress plug in and something cool. It does. There will be a square space or another platform user who ask, How can I do this in squarespace now? Many times, there just isn't a way to do the same thing and other platforms. Or if you could do something similar, you won't be able to use the specific plug in that everyone's chatting about. Please note that this doesn't mean that you can't have a successful blawg unless you use WordPress. I have friends who use and love squarespace, and I've messed around with it myself. And you can indeed create a beautiful website with squarespace. But you may feel like you're missing out when you keep hearing about these other plug ins that everyone's excited about and can't use them yourself. Number five WordPress is a complete content management system. While this class is focused on bloggers, WordPress goes far beyond a blawg. You can create a regular website with all the components you can expect on a static site, such as an about page contact page, etcetera. You can also set up a store or membership site on WordPress. You can create passwords, set up shopping cards and really do anything that you see on any website in WordPress. The thing that I love about this is that when you use WordPress, your site can grow with you. You may start with just a block and simple about in contact pages. Then you may decide to start selling digital products such as E classes on your blogged on WordPress. That's easy to set up. Or perhaps you want to go even further and set up a membership site where people have to log in to access content on WordPress. That's no problem. Since Facebook, Lincoln and other social platforms have evolved and added private groups, forums on websites aren't as popular as they used to be. But if you want to set one up on your WordPress site, you can number six. WordPress gives you freedom. We all love free, right? I'll get into Paid and freed were press options, incoming videos, and I don't want to give you the impression that if you have a WordPress site that you'll never have to pay for anything. Having said that, if you're bootstrapping it, there are a ton of free themes and plug ins that are available. And when I say a ton, I mean multiple thousands of them. Number seven WordPress is search engine optimized out of the box. WordPress has some built in S E o features, and there are also you guessed it multiple free WordPress plug ins to help you optimize your site for search. By the way, S CEO is a term you'll see all over the place. And as you've probably guessed, it means search engine optimization. What that simply means is increasing the odds of your content being found via Google and other search is number eight. WordPress is easy to update. WordPress is very easy to update. Unless you set it up to update automatically, you'll have to do the updates yourself. But that could be done with a single click, and you'll know exactly when you need to do it. As you can see, there are many reasons I feel that WordPress is the best platform on which to build your blawg in the next two videos. All covered the differences between hosted and self hosted sites and the difference between wordpress dot com and wordpress dot org's
3. Hosted Vs. Self-Hosted: In this video, I get into Thebes, Insp. Between hosted and self hosted blog's. When setting up your first blogged, one of the decisions you'll need to make right away is whether or not to go with a hosted or self hosted block option. Understanding the pros and cons of each one is important. This video will help you to understand the differences between hosted and self hosted blog's, and from there you can decide which one is best for you renting versus owning to help you understand the difference between hosted and self hosted. I'd like to compare them with renting versus owning a home. For this comparison. Hosted sides are like renting and self hosted sides are like owning. When you rent a home or apartment, you have less control over the home. To a large degree, someone else determines what you can and can't do with the home. For example, they may have rules about whether or not you can paint the walls, and if so, what colors you can use, you probably won't be free to do things like tear out and replace flooring. You also may or may not be allowed to have pets and there may be limitations on whether or not other people can stay with you. In addition to that, when your lease expires, you may be asked to move out, even if you've paid your rent on time each month with renting. The bottom line is that you live on someone else's property and you have to play by their rules. In contrast, when you own a home, you have a lot more control over everything. Now, having said that, you do have to obey the laws of the land, whether you're renting or owning. But comparatively speaking, you can do whatever you want with a home. You own advantages and disadvantages toning. In my opinion, freedom is the biggest advantage to owning your home or to using a self hosted website. In addition to that, for long term stability, owning is better when you own. Generally speaking, you build up equity in the home, and over time the home becomes more and more valuable to you. The flip side of this is that you have a lot more responsibility as a homeowner or as a self hosted blawg owner, then you would as a renter. When something breaks, it's your responsibility to fix it. And while it's great that you can paint the house however you want when it needs painting, you're the one who has to do it or pay someone else to do it. Now let's talk about the advantages and disadvantages to renting or to having Ah hosted Blawg. As mentioned previously, when you ran, you have to obey whatever rules the landlord lays out, even if they seem so we to you. The only way to get out of the rules is to move out as a Rencher, you're also investing in someone else's property rather than building on land you own. Because of that, there are fewer investment opportunities for renters. There is also less security for renters. For example, the landlord may choose to tear your building down, raise the rent or change the rules. On the other hand, when something breaks, it's the landlord's responsibility to fix it, and they have to pay for any maintenance on the property as well. So the big question is, is a hosted or self hosted blawg for you? Generally speaking, I'm a fan of self hosted blog's since blog's take a significant amount of time and in some cases money, it's best to build your block on property you own. This is especially true if you're in business, because the last thing you want to do is build a business on a site that may be here today and gone tomorrow. Or that may change the rules in a way that is unfavorable to you. On the other hand, if you're a hobby blogger and have no way to monetize your blawg, then building your block on a hosted site such as wordpress dot com or blogger may be right for you. In addition to that, if you are so intimidated by the technical aspects of setting up a self hosted blawg to the degree that it's keeping you from getting started, then a hosted blogged may be best for you in the same way that renting an apartment is often the best move when people first move out on their own, using a hosted blogged may be best for brand new bloggers. The bottom line is that it's easier to rent than it is to own. Just keep in mind that in the same way that moving from an apartment into a home your own is a big headache. Moving from a hosted to self hosted Blawg is a pain. Because of that, if you can start off owning and building your site using wordpress dot org's, that's what I recommend. And in fact, in the next video, I get into the difference between wordpress dot org's and wordpress dot com. So keep listening, and you'll understand why I recommend wordpress dot board.
4. Wordpress.org vs. WordPress.com: In this video, I get into Thebes. Rinse between wordpress dot org's and wordpress dot com. Now, hopefully, the first video convinced you that WordPress is the way to go. But it's important to know that there are two different versions of WordPress. Wordpress dot org's and wordpress dot com, wordpress dot com and wordpress dot org's look very similar, but they're actually very different. The most often cited difference between wordpress dot org's and wordpress dot com is where they're located on the Web. Wordpress dot com is a hosted solution, and you'll find it at wordpress dot com. It's located on their servers, and if you have a wordpress dot com site, you'll be subject to their rules and restrictions. And by the way, you'll notice that I may use more than one term to describe something in this class. Please note that wordpress dot com is a hosted site, and wordpress dot org's is self hosted. I will a times use the word hosted WordPress when referring to a wordpress dot com and self hosted WordPress when referring toward press dot org's, as mentioned in a previous video, a self hosted site which is like wordpress dot org's is like owning a home, and a hosted site such as wordpress dot com is like renting because of that, unless you're blawg is a hobby blogged, I recommend wordpress dot org's having said that the point of this video is to further explain the differences between the two options and help you decide which option is best for you. First, let's do a cost comparison. Many new bloggers start off with a hosted wordpress dot com site because it's free and fat . Much of the buzz about blogging is that you can do it absolutely free now. While that's true, it's important to understand the limitations of the free version of WordPress. So just a little disclaimer. The information that I'm going to give now is accurate at the time that I researched this class. WordPress does, however, occasionally change their packages and prices. And so it's possible that when you watch this class, some of the information may be different. And to see the latest packages and pricing, be sure to visit wordpress dot com forward slash pricing. OK, so now let's talk about the pricing options for wordpress dot com sites free the free version of wordpress dot com has the following features only three gigabytes of storage. You must use a wordpress dot com domain name. So, for example, if your business is Dave's Spicy Pickles, your domain name on wordpress dot com would be days spicy pickles dot wordpress dot com. WordPress may place their ads on your Web site, and you won't have control over the ads that are placed. And finally, the only type of support you'll have is community support. Okay, so now let's move into the paid versions of wordpress dot com. There's premium for $99 a year now. If you don't like the limitations and restrictions of the free wordpress dot com option, you can upgrade to the premium version for $99 a year. Here are the primary ways it's different from the free version. There's 13 gigabytes of storage. You can have a custom domain name, for example. Instead of Dave Spicy pickles dot wordpress dot com As your domain name, you're you are Elkan. Be Dave spicy pickles dot com. You have more customization options. There's no ads placed on your site, and instead of having just community support, you'll also have email support. At the next level, there's business, which is $299 a year. If what? The premium version of hosted WordPress so wordpress dot com offers isn't quite enough. You can upgrade to the business version for $299 per year. For that, you get a lot of great features. For example, unlimited storage custom Domain name example. Dave spicy pickles dot com. No ads placed on your site and, in addition to community support, an email support. You'll also have life chat support. They have 50 premium themes to choose from advanced customization options, e commerce options and Google Analytics. So obviously, while wordpress dot com can be free, the free version is very limited. If you truly want to run a business on wordpress dot com and do any actual selling on site , you'll need to upgrade to the business version and pay the annual price of $299 to do so Now. Please note, however, that you can start off with the free version, you know, just to get started and used limited features and upgrade as needed. Just know that an upgrade away from the free option is definitely in the future of any legitimate business owner. Right now, let's talk about pricing for wordpress dot org's or self hosted sites. Pricing for wordpress dot or excites isn't a straightforward as a pricing for wordpress dot com sites. The reason for this is that there are many variables, and you have a lot of freedom and flexibility with what you choose. Now the actual software is free, but there are some costs associated with having a wordpress dot or excite. For example, with a self hosted WordPress site, you must purchase a domain name and pay for Web hosting. This doesn't have to be expensive. Domain name generally cost between 10 to $15 a year, and at the most basic level, hosting costs around $5 a month. Technically, purchasing a domain name and hosting are all of the costs that you must pay for a self hosted WordPress site. But you'll like we pay a lot more. For example, there are a lot of free WordPress themes that you can access right from within the dashboard of your self hosted WordPress site, and I have another video about that, so be sure to check that out. And by the way, free themes are fine to start with. But you'll likely want to upgrade to a premium theme at some point, since premium themes often have better functionality and are free from advertising and other things that often come with free themes. In addition to those cost, you'll need to be your own tech person or pay someone else to handle tech issues. For you. This could be very expensive, or it can come at a low cost. If your technically inclined and you don't mind rolling up your sleeves and doing the work yourself, you can indeed keep the costs low. Now let's talk about freedom or ease of use when it comes right down to it. The biggest difference between wordpress dot org's and wordpress dot com is freedom versus ease of use. With a self hosted wordpress dot org's site, you have ultimate freedom and flexibility. You can put ads on your side or leave them off, and if you put them on, they'll be ads of your choosing, and you'll potentially make money off of them. You can install as many plug ins as you want. You can essentially do whatever you want with your site, so long as it's legal. That's a good part. The challenging part is that if there are problems with the site, they are indeed your problems. If something goes wrong, it's up to you to fix it or pay someone else to fix it. Your site may also be more prone to hacking and other issues that you wouldn't have to deal with. On a hosted wordpress dot com site with a hosted wordpress dot com site has mentioned previously, you are essentially building your block on someone else's property. In addition to that, unless you upgrade to the business plan, you won't really be able to run a business on your site. On the other hand, your site will be more secure on wordpress dot com than if you go with wordpress dot org's set up is easy, and you really don't have to worry about maintenance. So the biggest question that you have to answer when it comes to whether to go with wordpress dot or gore wordpress dot com is do I want freedom and flexibility coupled with the responsibility of maintaining the site or do I want restrictions with ease of use. Okay, so I know that this is a lot of information to take in, So now I'm going to give you my recommendation. My personal recommendation is that if you have a personal site such as a hobby blogger or a blogged that is more like a journal with minimal monetization options, you may want to go with a hosted option such as wordpress dot com or perhaps even blogger dot com. Now, if you're going to run a business, then you're better off with wordpress dot org's. The only exception I would make for this is if you are tech challenged and don't have the money to pay a tech person to help you with your site. In that case, you may want to go with wordpress dot com, but if you do, be sure to get at the bare minimum the premium version, which will set you back $99 per year. Even if you decide to go with the premium version, I recommend that you plan to save up for the business plan so that you can better monetize your blawg
5. Set Up Web Hosting: in this video, I'm going to walk you through the process of purchasing website hosting now the Web host that I recommend is slight ground. I started off with host Datar, and I used it for a number of years, but it just seemed like things really went downhill and I was no longer getting the type of service from them that I wanted. My site was going down and so on, so I switched over to Cite Ground. And that's what I now recommend at the top. Here. There's different options home Web hosting, WordPress services and so on. So you would just quick on the Web hosting option, and you'll notice that they have a few different options. The startup option. Grow big and Gogi. Now, Since I'm assuming that this is your first website to set up with WordPress, you'll could just start with the startup one. This is if you know you Onley want one website, and obviously, if you're just beginning, you're not going to need a ton of Web space, and you also won't have a ton of visitors and it's gonna have all of the basic features Now . What you can do is You can also look at the grow big, which is just a couple dollars a month more, and you'll notice it has some premium features that are missing from the start ups such as priority technical support. And that in a of itself is actually huge. And also the one year of S S L. Which that's a security certificate which is often required if you're going to sell things on your site. So there is definitely the potential there where you might want to start even with the grow big rather than start up even if you're only going to do one website. I'm just gonna walk you through this as faras Aiken go without actually purchasing, because I already have an account. And so I'm not going to go all the way through the process of purchasing. But hopefully it will give you a good idea. So let's just assume that the grow big is what you want. I do think it has enough added features that you might want to start with that. But of course, if you want to go as cheap as possible through the startup, someone a quick gone get started and you'll notice that there's two options. Register a new domain, and I already have a domain. Now, for the purpose of this demonstration, I'm going to do register a new domain. Ah, And in another video, I will show you what to do. If you already have a domain as an example, I'm just gonna use my name so you can see it's doing a search for it. And it says the domain name you have chosen is not available, and it's giving me some other options. Now, what I could do is I could just choose one of these other options or I could come up with a variation of my name. So, for example, I could do Rebecca L. Livermore if I wanted to put my middle initial in. So we'll see that is probably available, all right. And then what you're going to have to do is put in your email address and your password and confirm a password. Now, I already see. I'm gonna get into trouble with going too far into this because I do. If I put my email in here, it will notice I already have an account and ask me the law again. But This is a pretty straightforward process. You know, you just put in your email address and so on, and you fill out all of your information, including your payment information. You see what you're agreeing to hear is the plan is the grow big plan. The period is for 12 months, and now this is something important to pay attention to because notices $5.95 amount is based on me doing it for 12 months, so the bill would be $71.40 so that's something to be aware of. If you have the money, though, I definitely recommend that because you can see that at if I buy 12 months in advance. It's 5 95 a month. If I only did it month to month, it's $14.95 a month. So again it makes more financial sense to do it longer term. But if you're really on a shoestring budget, then you would just switch it to one month. But even then they're going to do a trial, plus a set up feet. So I really think you're better off doing the 12 months. But let's just show you what that will look like. That 5 95 plus 24 95 notice how by default, this shows these extra services and you can select to do these or select not to do these. So, for example, if I take that off when we just pay attention down here to this bottom corner, and if I take off the SG site scanner, it drops the price down to fits 57 85. You'll notice that domain registration and the SSL certificate are included. But let's say I didn't want domain privacy. I would uncheck that and pay attention to what happens down here is it drops it down to 45 85. So again, you can play around with the different options here and see what it will do to this bottom line Figure. If that's something that you really concerned about now I do want to say something on domain privacy, and that is that if you do not do domain privacy, first of all, people will know your name. Your address, um, potentially even your phone number, but definitely your name, your address and your email address. And so you'll like we get, ah, lot of pitches from people trying to sell things to you, so you end up with a lot of spam. For that reason alone, I think it's personally think it's worth paying the $12 a year extra for that. And, um, and then this SG site scanner is a monitoring service that checks your website daily and immediately notified you of your website has been hacked or injected with malicious code. All right, So again, this was just a basic on how to set up Web hosting. You can see that it's a very, very easy. It's essentially choosing your plan, choosing your domain name and then filling out the information such as your name, email, address, password and then, of course, your payment information and choosing whether or not you want these extras.
6. Install WordPress: Okay, Once you have purchased your Web hosting, you'll want to install WordPress. Now. Thankfully, this is really easy to dio. And depending on what account type you got, you may be able to reach out to support and ask them to do it for you in sight ground. You just There's always a support tab here, and if you need help, you can type in, you know, install WordPress, and it's going to show you their how to install WordPress. And so it's quite easy to Dio. You can request assistance from the site ground team so says our support team is available to you 24 7 via phone, chat or ticket so you can proceed to contact us here, and you can have them help you out there now. So see, under technical assistance, there's WordPress assistance, but it's actually quite easy to Dio, but I'm gonna show you how to do it yourself. And then, if you have a problem, then I recommend reaching out to support by just clicking on the support tab. And I've always had a really good experience with their support. But let's quick on accounts and then go to see panel all right now you'll notice under WordPress tools, there's WordPress installer. All you have to do is quick on the WordPress installer and you'll notice that there is an install button right there. And there's also the feature Screenshots and demo. I'm gonna quick un install. And again, I'm not sure exactly how far I'll be able to go, because I don't have a domain name that I'm adding. But you'll notice that you can choose here whether you want https or http www and so on or http, and that's really a matter of preference. But you do need to think about it now. The H T T. P s the ss for secure, and that's what you want. If you are. If you have a site where you are selling products on your site, otherwise you can just go with http or the H T T p w w w all right now your site name is you just put whatever the name of your blog's is going to be, and you can change this later. So it's not a problem. You'll notice that they give you a kind of a random admin user name you can use that or you could make one yourself. What I do recommend, though, is that you do not use the name admin. And the reason for that is that in most coast, that is the default setting. And therefore, somebody was trying to hack into your account. They might try to use the admin user name admin. So I do recommend using something other than admin. And then, of course, you can see that there are some other options here, such as choosing your language, limit log in attempts, and this is a security thing. I wouldn't worry about that now. But gonna do that later, and then you'll see that there's choose a theme to install, and I'm gonna talk about this later. I prefer to do this from inside of the WordPress admin panel, so you can just leave that as none. And then you can click on install. That is literally. All there is to installing WordPress is, too. Go to your C panel. Let's let's go back down just to show you again. Review it real quick. So you click on my accounts, go to see panel, scroll down to WordPress tools, go to WordPress installer and then put gun the install and go through this whole process, and it's it's pretty self explanatory. It's quite easy, and then you just quick on the install button.
7. Install a Theme: Okay, now, the next thing that you're going to do is you are going to install a theme for your site. Now think of a theme as the outside wrapper to your site. It's what gives your site its personality. Its what's going to have your branding and themes also have different features. So, for example, some themes might have an option for two columns or three columns. Or what have you? Don't get too hung up on the theme right away, because you can always change your theme. So that's the good news. So, first of all, we just want to start with a theme. Anything just about, well, dio. And then from there Later you can, as I already mentioned you can tweak it. So the first thing that you're going to do to install a theme is to log into your WordPress dashboard. Now, most likely, you got an email that had your log in information, but if you didn't or if you've misplaced that or something, the good news is it's always easy to know where toe log into a WordPress site. As you can see up here in the browser, I have name of your site dot com slash WP Dash admin Now, obviously, I doubt very seriously the name of your side. His name of your site dot com. It might be Ralphs automotive dot us or whatever it may be. Whatever it is, you put that in there, including the right end of it. So, for example, dot com or dot net or dot us slash WP admin. Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and log into my sight now, okay? And once you are in your sight, you'll notice that over here on the left are all kinds of different options. And don't worry, because we are going to go through these options or at least the main ones of things that you need to know about a little bit later in future videos. But right now, what you want to pay attention to is appearance, and you'll notice that when I hover over appearance, there are options such as themes, customize widgets, menus, header and editor. What we're going to look at now is themes. So we just click on that, and by default, you're going to have the option for a couple of standard default WordPress themes and you'll notice they have these different numbers. 2017 2015 2016. These are your most basic and most common WordPress themes. They're actually pretty decent. As faras free themes go, the biggest problem with them is, since they come installed as standard, there will be a lot of other people who have the same themes. So there's a couple of different ways to get a different thing than these three. It's pretty easy to see that if you want to add a new theme, you can just click on the plus button and notice up here that there's featured popular latest favorites and feature filter. And then there's also upload theme. So we're gonna talk about these different options here. So let's look at feature filter and let's say that you wanted a theme with two columns or you wanted one with a right side bar or left side bar or a Gridley out Or what have you or all of these different features available? You could use the future filter. You can also just quick back to these tabs and look at the featured ones. You can look at popular ones, and these are gonna be ones that other people have used quite a bit. When you scroll through them, you can get an idea of what they'll look like. And so, just depending on your type of blawg and what appeals to you just by eyeballing these, you'll see that there are a lot of different options. So, for example, this one is called Kale. This obviously looks like something that would be used for a food blawg. So you can then quick on details and preview. And this previews what the site looks like. And so you can see that this site has a big picture at the top. It has about these air what the different pages air like. And it it also gives you an idea of what the featured post and the search and other elements like that look like. Okay, so you can just kind of go through it and get a fill for if you like the way that the theme looks OK, now let's say that you said, Oh, this one's perfect. I love this one. You would simply click on install, and then you would quick on activate. And then that is all there would be to making that your theme. Now I'm going to switch back to this one because this is one that I was using and and actually this is a good time to point out how easy it is to switch to a different theme. I had clicked on Activate this one even though I had this one. But I've decided I want to go back to this one. So I'm gonna do activate on that one. And now you'll notice this is the theme that I have. Okay, now that's the way to install tons of free themes that are available. But let's say that you have purchased a theme. There's a lot of great companies out there that have themes, and I will leave links to some of my favorite theme cos in a resource document in the project area. But let's say that you've already purchased one. You just click on add new and upload seem so you click on that and then you're going to choose the file, and you would choose it from wherever you had saved it to your computer. Now, one thing that's important to note here is that it says if you have a theme in a dot zip format. You may install it by a bloating it here, so notice it has to be in a zip file. When you purchase a theme, it will come in a zip file. You don't want to unzip it before uploading it. So if you did unzip it, then just make sure to select the Unzipped format and uploaded here.
8. Permalinks: before you write your first post. An important thing to do is to set up your Pirmin leaks. So over on the left here you'll notice one of the options is settings. And then down on the right, you'll see that there is Perma links. Okay, now notice that it has common settings, and there's plain date and name month and name, numeric, post name and custom structure. What I recommend is selecting Post Name as the option, and what it's gonna have here is your site dot com slash and then the post name, as as it implies. So, for example, let's say that you created a block post and the U. R L that you gave for the Post Waas. My first post. This would have your site ning dot com slash my first post. Okay, Now, the reason why I recommend that is for a few reasons. One is that you have the right key words in your post, at least if you did it properly. And that means that you probably actually wouldn't do a post that is called my first post because people would not find that in search. Okay, but let's say that you created a post on oh growing kale will go back to the ah like a gardening. If you had a gardening post and you wrote a ah post on gardening kale or growing kill your post name could be growing dash tail, and that would show up in the U. R L that way. Now let's look at some of the other options just to see why they would not be the best fit . Notice that the plane option has quote at the end of the URL question mark Dash P equals 123 You know first. Well, that's not attractive. It doesn't have any keywords in it. And so on. Here's day and name now. I don't really like this because first of all, the URL is longer, and it also has the date in it. Now, that's not necessarily a good thing. If you write Evergreen Post and Evergreen post our post that are still going to be relevent even a year from now, five years from now, 10 years from now, you really don't want the date in there and so on. So this is kind of ah, similar one. It has just the year and the month and then the post name and and so on. So the easiest way to do this is to choose post name as an option.
9. Your First Post: OK, now it's time to write your first block post. And if this makes you at all nervous, I just want to encourage you that even though in a sense your first blood post is a big deal, there's a couple of things to keep in mind. First of all, you can always go in and edit your post, and you can also delete your post. So let's say down the road, you change the direction of your blog's, or you just felt like you didn't do a very good job on your post. You can edit or delete your post at any time. So initially, what you want to dio is just get started. And the interesting thing about it is that when you first start, most likely no one or very few people will read your block, and I know that might seem a little bit discouraging, but the great thing about that is, as you're just getting started, your learning and you'll improve Over time, you can see that there is this post option all post add new categories and tags, so what you want to do is click on Add New and the Great Thing about this is that it's going to be very, very similar to Microsoft Word or other word processing options that you've used in the past. Now that might not seem like it, because notice here there's two tabs. One is visual and the other is text. And on the visual side, if you click on that, you're going to see what looks like a lot more options, you know, and if you quick on this little thing that has all these dots on it, it will bring up even more options. So if you're overwhelmed by all of these extra ones, click on that. It will go away and then you'll have just a few options here. So what you're going to do is you're going to put in your block post title and again for the sake of demonstration will just call it my first post. And then you just type whatever you want. And obviously you're going to use proper punctuation. You know, start to sentence with a capital and so on. But you just type the give whatever text that you want in to this space here, and then let's say first big point, which, of course you would call something else. You could highlight that. And then from this drop down menu, you would want to use heading one and notice how that makes it much bigger. Let's say that you have a sub point underneath that first big point again. You go under here and you could do heading to and notice how that's a smaller font. Okay, And let's say that you have uneven sub point under the sub point. Then you would do heading three and so on. And so each of these is going to be a little bit different now, in addition to having the different font styles and so on, the points in the sub points are important from a search perspective. So you're going to want to use whatever keywords that are relevant to your post in there. So again, how we had used the example of growing kill, you might say five things to remember when growing tell, all right, and then the first point would be one. Ah, and I know nothing about growing kill. So don't take this is growing kill advice. Pick a sunny spot and you have to determine the format. So, for example, I put a period there, I probably wouldn't. I would probably also use caps, but again, that's more of a matter of preference. The main thing to understand is that depending on if it's a big point or a sub point or sub sub point or what have you you select from down here from these heading menus your regular taxed. So, for example, this is just regular text. Like what? Say that you would put in a little intro here. You'll notice this. Let me highlight it. Here is paragraph font. That's what you want all of your main text to be. If you wonder what you've done, what heading you've used. If you highlight, it'll show it. And even if you quick next to it, it will show what up here. So here you've got paragraph heading one heading two, heading three. And obviously, in between these main points, you're going to have at least a paragraph using the paragraph text. Now, let's say that you wanted to emphasize something. Okay, type. Let's say I want to emphasize whatever you want. I would highlight it and bold it, or I could highlight it. And instead of building it, put a Tallix and so on. The main things here are bold italics, bullet points. So see, a quick done that and that made edible. What point? If I put in a new one, it would have another bullet, Blaine. And then this one is numbered. That just make did numbered. Let's say that you wanted this to be a quote. You would highlight it and used the quote option, and it would be like a block quote and so on. This is about alignment. Left center. Right. This is how you put in a link. Okay, so you just go here, you add the link here. And so you're gonna put http my link dot com, whatever the link ISS, then quick on the little sprocket. And I always always recommend clicking on open link in New in a new tab. And then you quick on update like that and you'll notice now there is a link there. There's just a couple other things that I'm gonna point out here. And that is that there are different format for post now, honestly, most the time. You're just going to use standard because that's just a basic bog post that you can do pretty much anything with these other options. I don't really want to talk about them because it just depends on the specific theme that you have, what format options you'll have available to you. But in most cases, you're just going to use standard. You're going to have categories that are available. And if you wanted to add a category, you would just say demo category if that's what you wanted to call it. And I'm just gonna put that in there and see is since I put that in, it just checked. It is if that's the category that I want. But let's say that I wanted a different one. I was doing, um, this on going grey. Naturally, that was again just a fun thing that I was sharing with people as I was going through the process. And so if that's what my post is about, I would select that one. You'll notice that there's also a parent category options, so let's say that my demo was underneath. It would have to do with going grey. Naturally, I would select that as the parent category. You can then also add some tags and tags. Can be used just to help organize content. It could be a helpful way for your readers to find a different content if your theme uses tags and you know there's some debate about whether or not tags help with search engine optimization. But if you wanted to get real granular and put tags in, you could. The most important thing, though, is the category. Now there's just one more thing to look at here, and that is the featured image. I think that images are important to include in your blawg. This isn't a class on image creation or anything like that, but I just want to show you how to add an image. Now, if you look at blog's, they all tend to have one main image at the top, and that is what the featured images you can add mawr images in. If you would like Teoh. But the featured image is the main image, and it's important to do that because first of all, it looks nice. And then also let's say that you're sharing a post on social media. It's gonna pull in the featured image, and if you don't have one, it's just going to be blank or just not look very good. So you definitely want to include a featured image. So you quick there. And then let's just say I'm gonna pick this one as my featured image. Then I could if I wanted to. I could put a caption. But more importantly, is this all text Where again? Let's say I was writing about growing kill. I would put my key words in there and I would click on set featured image, All right. And then it'll show there, and it will also show up in the post. So in this particular theme, it shows up really big. And then you can see the basics of what the poster like there. Okay, Once you have completed your post, you have the option of publishing it immediately, which I hardly ever to. I usually schedule it, or you can schedule it for any date in the future. And any time I do recommend having a set day and time per week that you publish, but don't worry about that too much at the beginning. But the main thing that this does for you is it enables you to work ahead and schedule things so that even if you're busy or your, you know, traveling or what have you Your block post can go out at a specific time. All right. I hope that helps.
10. Categories: in this video, I'm going to show you how to add categories to your blawg. Now, before I get into the how I want to just give you a couple of tips about categories, think about categories as being the main big picture topics about your blawg. So, for example, let's say that you blogged about pets. One category, maybe dogs, another cats, another birds and so on. What you really want to avoid is using categories that are kind of vague. So, for example, I had one client that Hades. Before I started working for him, he had set up a category for Post by. We'll just call him John Smith Post by John Smith. And this would make sense, possibly if there were tons of different authors on the block. But he was the only one. And so every single post of Hiss went into the category post by John Smith. So that was really not a great idea. And you don't wanna have just dozens and dozens of categories, I would say between five and 10 categories. So plan out what categories are going to make the most sense for your blawg and then seek to fit the content that you right into those categories. So at the beginning you might start off with just, let's say, for five categories and then over time, realize you're going to write about a couple of other things and then add some additional categories. But don't go too crazy with categories where you can go a little crazy is with tags, and you can have an unlimited number of tags and those will be much more specific. Okay, now, having said that, there are basically two ways to add categories to your blawg. So over here on the left, you see post and then there is categories. You click on that you can add a new category over here on the left. Okay. And so you would name I'm just gonna put new category. And if it was going to be a subcategory, you could put it underneath another category, so as an example of sub categories, and that's a way to get more categories. And by the way, you could have, like I have content creation and then underneath I have blogging, podcasting, social media and writing. And by the way, when I first set this up, I added in more categories than I actually ended up using. So I made one of the mistakes that I'm telling you not to make. But a way to again go deeper is to have a main category, and if you want, you can put some sub categories underneath it. Okay, so now let's say back to the pet example. Let's say that you had a category that was dogs. You could have a subcategory for terriers and another subcategory for poodles and so on. So again, if you you put the name of the category. If there's a parent category, meaning if this is like a subcategory that you're doing, you would put it underneath here using the parent category selection, and then you simply click on add new category. Okay, now, another thing that you'll want to do once you set up some categories is too select a default category. That way, if you forget to put a post any category, it will automatically go into that default category. Since I write a lot about content creation, I made my default post category content creation. Now you'll notice where you can find this is under settings and then one of our excuse me settings and then writing so you would go to settings and then click on writing. And one of the options is default Post category, and there's a drop down menu that has all of the different categories in it. Okay, so those are the main things with categories, but let's say that you're writing a post and you realize you don't have appropriate category for the Post. You can actually create a category right within a post. So let's just go into a post, and I'll show you exactly what I mean by that. All right, so you see, over here on the right hand side, there are categories when you're writing your post, you will select which one you want. For example, I could select the content Creation one. But let's say that, especially when you're first starting off and you don't have a category that fits with the Post that you're writing, all you do is quick on add new category. You can put the name of the category in there, and then, if it's a subcategory of something else, you can quick on this little drop down menu by parent category. So that's all there is to it again, as a quick recap, you want between five or 10 categories, so start off with fewer and add more as you need them. Think in terms of broad topics four year blawg and then select a category for each post.
11. Add Pages to Your Site: in this video, I'm going to show you how to create pages for your WordPress site. Now we've talked about post and poster your typical block posts. They tend to be updated frequently, and they typically appear on your site in the order that they were published with the most recently published post. Being at the top pages are different from post in that you usually only have a handful of them, and they are what are considered static pages, meaning they're not constantly changing. So as an example, you'll have pages like an about page and a contact page. If you offer services, you'll have a services page. As an author, I have a page for my books and so on. So those air the types of things that you have as pages versus post. Now the good news is once you understand how to create block post, and we kind of talked about it before and I showed all of these different little options, such as bold and italics and bullet points and so on, you basically know how to create pages. The difference is you create post where it says post right here and click on add new for pages. You go to pages and you quick on, add new. Okay, so that's really the only difference that there is in terms of how to set one up. So you'll see that when I go into pages, it looks it looks just like a blond post, except the difference is you don't have categories over here. That's the main difference. But you'll notice everything in here looks very, very similar now, as I mentioned, when you publish a blawg post, it automatically gets added to your site. However, when you published a page, it doesn't automatically get added to your site. So the way that it ends up being added to your site is by going to the menu option so you'll find menu under appearance and then menus. All right, and you can see that these are the pages that I have added to my site. And if you look at all of my pages, there's a time more pages that I have, And the reason for that is I at times may remove a page for my sight not deleted. But take it off of what's called the navigation, which are the links that are on the site and the reason for that. Maybe let's say that I'm not wanting to offer any services right now. I'll take the services page off my site again. I don't delete it. I just move it off of this structure here, and then it no longer shows up. So you can see here. You've got about testimonials, templates, books, email, marketing, learning center contact and member log in. Let's go to my site so you can see what those look like on my site so you can see those things that I just mentioned are showing up right up here at the top. OK, so that's because I've added them to my navigation from my WordPress dashboard. So again, let me just show you real quickly how to do that. You go to appearance menus, and then you can select pages or other things whatever you want. And years may look a little different from mine because Air Re site every theme is a little bit different. But let's say that I wanted to add my editorial guidelines template to my site navigation. Now there's a reason I don't have it there, but let's say that I wanted to I would just check market and I would click on Add to menu and you'll see it popped up here. Then I would click on Save Menu and let's look at the site and you'll see that it's on there. Editorial guidelines template. So that's how I added it up here. Now let's go back and go back to the dashboard and again go to appearance and menus, and I can. From this drop down menu I can click on Remove. Okay, and so that's all there is to it. You just add from here you can see you can also add categories to your top navigation if you prefer. So let's say that you you want to list all of your categories across the top and have people access in that way. You would also do that from this menu area. You can also drag them around to change the order of them. Or you can also, if you'll notice that there's kind of this indented area that would make it like a sub page . So I'll do that under my email marketing center, so I'm gonna make it indented. I'm gonna save it, and then let's go back and take a look and you can see now under email Marketing center, There's contact. There's a sub page. So that's how you can make a page show up underneath another one of the links here. All right, now, let's go back and fix that because I don't want to leave it there. So again, I'm just going appearance menus, and I don't want that to be a subcategory. I want it to be over to the edge, so I'm just dropping it this way, saving it and again we'll take a look and you'll see that once again it shows up. Contact is showing up there again instead of down here. So it's really pretty straightforward to get the pages or excuse me, the yes, the pages that you've set up on your site.
12. Widgets: Okay, Now let's talk about the difference between plug ins and widgets. Okay? I'm gonna go back into my dashboard and I'll show you where you find each one and how they differ. So you'll find widgets under the appearance menu. And widgets are what come with your theme. So not every theme has the same widgets. There's some standard ones that tend to be on everything. But every theme is a little bit different, and sometimes the difference is the functionality that comes through widgets. So let's just take a quick look at widgets. All right, so these are the different widgets that are available. So let's say that I wanted to list post from my categories. I could drag this widget over to, let's say the sidebar and I could select what categories I want to show on my sidebar. Now, I don't want to do that. Some of them pull it back over here, one of the most important widgets, and this is something that you have in every single theme is the text widget. So I'm just going to drag it over here and I'll put it you see, I'll put it on my sidebar and When you open it up, you see that you can put pretty much anything in there. It almost looks like a blood post of sorts. You can put a title in it, and then that will show up on your site. But the main thing about this that's important is this text option. Oh, now look what they just said. Hey, did you hear? We have a custom html widget now. Okay, So what I was going to do is I was going to go into this text side and put in some HTML and this is letting me know that there's now a custom html widget. So let's go ahead and take a look at that, uh, custom HTML. Okay, let's just do this and let's just experiment here, okay? And you'll see that you would put the title in here, and then you would paste the HTML. So html is going to be the code that you get. So, for example, let's say that you were a no affiliate for something. There would be some HTM l code that would have your affiliate link, and you could paste it into this content area, and then it would show up on your site. Now you can use the text option the same way again on this. You would just put the HTML on the tech side right in here. I'm just going to show you what will happen when I use a text widget. Lets say that I am going to put text widget demo. And here is some text, all right? And I'm just gonna bold this and you can see I could link that to something else. If I wanted Teoh, I could a tower size use bullet points and so on. But let's just click on save. Let's go to the site and notice how. Now on my sidebar I have text widget demo, and you can see that I bowled ID that I've got some regular text and I had put a smiley face in so you can put any little thing that you want to end their Let's go back to the html widget and let's paste in the code for a YouTube video that you wanted to put on the sidebar of your site. You would go to share and you would click on in bed and then you would grab this code right here and let's put it under the custom. HTML. You will just call this YouTube in bed. You would call it something a lot better than that save. And then let's look at the site again and you can see that it embedded the video right in the sidebar so away that you might want to do. This is you might want to create, Let's say, a welcome video. Or you could do a video for one of your products or something like that. And, um, you could just embed it or any other code into your sidebar, using that html widget or using a text widget.
13. Install Plugins: Okay, now let's talk about plug ins, plug ins, air, one of the things that I love about WordPress and that a lot of other people love about WordPress. I think one of the best ways to describe what plug ins are is to say that they're similar toe APS for a phone over here on the left, there is a plug INS option. You can see installed plug ins, and you can also click on Add New Now to add plug ins to your site. You can select from these different plug ins, and there's tons. I mean literally hundreds, if not thousands of plug ins. And I'm gonna talk about in a little bit about why you need to be careful not to add too many. But let's say that you wanted to add an editorial calendar into your site. You could do a search for editorial calendar, and it would bring up all of these different editorial calendar options. You can notice that each of them has ah star ratings, and they also talk about when they were last updated as well. So basically, what I recommend doing is looking through and finding one that looks like it will meet your needs, checking out the ratings and see when it was last updated. If something hasn't been updated for years, then you might want to stay away from it. You could try it, but it may not work right with your version of WordPress, and sometimes you just have to try a plug in to see if you like it. And sometimes then you might not like it, and then you can uninstall it. But let's first talk about how to install a plug in. Now it's In some ways, this is going to be similar to theme options. If you remember how we installed themes and also the different options that were up here, there's featured and popular and recommended and favorites and things like that. But the way that you do it is you install a plug in this way, you just click on install, and you can see that it says that it's installed, and then after you install what you activate it now, sometimes the plug in will show up underneath here. So, for example, I had installed these plug ins that were having affiliates and east Door and things like that and If you hover over them, you'll see that there are a lot of different settings and things like that that you can tweak some of the other ones. Don't have options for tweaking. Don't go too crazy with plug ins. Plug ins can slow down your site, and they also sometimes can make your site more vulnerable toe hacking and things like that if the plug ins aren't updated and all of that so you only wanna install plug ins that you actually need and are going to use. Okay. Now, in addition to the plug ins that you see listed in here, there is also this option to upload a plug in when you buy a plug in. It would be safe, your computer in a ZIP file, same way as for themes, and what you would do is you would upload the plug in. And again, if you have a plug in in a zip format, you may install it by uploading it. Here, you click on Choose File and you would. I don't have any plug ins that I wanted to upload, but there would be a folder, a Zip folder with the plug, and you would quick on it and uploaded that way. Okay, now let's say that you want to remove some of your plug ins. You go back here to plug ins. If you had several, you wanted to deactivate it. Once you could quick on them and from the bulk menu deactivate. Or if you had just one, you could just quick on deactivate. You'll also notice that I have some plug ins that I need to update, and so I'm going to do that, because again, it's a security thing. So let me go ahead and quick on all of the ones that are saying that there's an update available on the quick on each of them. And then I am going to select from the bulk option update and apply, and you can see it kind of spinning around and you see it's updated, so that's all there is to it now. Periodically, it's important to go through your plug ins and get rid of any that you're not using. So as an example, I had set up ah, way to, um, add any people anybody that up send to my affiliate program have them added to get response , which is what I use for email, but I haven't been doing that. So what I should dio is deactivate that because I'm not using it right now, So ah, like anything, it's easy to get behind in that. But if you do periodically, just go through and clean up your plug ins. Your site will run better.
14. Your Project: congratulations on completing this class as your project for this class. You'll decide whether or not you use wordpress dot com or wordpress dot org's and you'll share your decision in the project area of this class. Now, in addition to that, once you set up your block, feel free to share your link to your blogged in the project area and ask for feedback. I'd be happy to share my thoughts. If you have any specific questions or you want feedback on a specific part of your class, such as your navigation or upped and former anything like that, I'd be happy to give it Teoh. So thanks so much. I wish you the very best. And I also would like to encourage you to check out my other blogging courses. I know that there's a lot there that will be helpful to you. And by the way, if you enjoyed this class, I'd appreciate it if you give me a thumbs up. Thanks so much and happy blocking
Rebecca Livermore, Microsoft Office for Creatives
