In our WP 101 tutorial we touched on the basics of WordPress. Now lets take a closer look at what you can actually do with WordPress. No longer just a blogging platform it is now a fully functioning robust content management system (CMS).
2. Stay Informed
Join our E-Club http://bit.ly/SNMe-club to receive our
monthly newsletter, with practical tips to increase
brand awareness and strategies for more engaging
relationships with your clients.
Visit and Like our Facebook page
http://on.fb.me/KFujSu Go ahead - post your Social
Media & WordPress questions and get answers in
real time.
3. It Starts With Passion
There’s no shortage of creative thinkers out there.
What’s a little harder to find are creative thinkers who
understand business. That’s where Supernova Media
Shines.
We are a full service web company. We provide our
customers with a uniform custom branded web
presence.
At Supernova Media we specialize in the speedy setup
of WordPress websites & blogs. All our websites are
mobile friendly, have onsite search engine optimization
and social media integration.
4. What is WordPress?
WordPress is no doubt the most popular content
management and blog publishing application available
on the web today. First released in as a basic blog
engine, WordPress is now a full-featured, fully
customizable website creation tool used by millions of
individuals, businesses and organizations around the
world. WordPress is most popular for its packaged
application, which can be downloaded for free at
WordPress.org and installed anywhere as the
basis, platform, and structure for an entire website. It
also offers free blog services online at WordPress.com.
5. What is WordPress?
Because it is open source—meaning simply that all
of its code and files are free to use, customize, and
enhance—WordPress technology has been
harnessed by thousands. From curious individuals
to freelance professionals to Fortune 500
companies, people all over the world use
WordPress because of its many powerful features.
These include a templating
system, workflow, search-engine friendly link
structures, advanced content categorization, and
more.
7. WordPress Statistics
Today 374,196 bloggers posted 412,407 posts and 420,254 comments.
That’s about 286 posts per minute, and 292 comments per minute. In
total 95,205,329 words were written. That's more than 2 times larger than
the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, which has about 40 million words!
How many people read blogs on WordPress.com?
Over 297 million people view more than 2.5 billion pages each month.
How many posts are published on WordPress.com?
WordPress.com users produce about 500,000 new posts and 400,000 new
comments on an average day.
8. WordPress Statistics
Where in the world is WordPress.com used?
WordPress blogs are written in over 120 languages. Below is a break down of
the top 10 languages:
English 66%
Spanish 8.7%
Portuguese 6.5%
Indonesian 3.5%
Italian 2%
German 1.8%
French 1.4%
Russian 1.1%
Vietnamese 1.1%
Swedish 1.0%
9. WordPress Statistics
Who publishes on WordPress.com?
From TechCrunch to TED, CNN, and the National
Football League, WordPress.com users span a broad
range.
WordPress has a publisher blog detailing some
leading WordPress sites. You can also see more top
WordPress.com blogs of the moment or view the top
freshly pressed posts.
10. Wordpress 201
In our WP 101 tutorial we touched on the basics of WordPress.
Now lets take a closer look at what you can actually do with
WordPress. No longer just a blogging platform it is now a fully
functioning robust content management system (CMS).
What is a (CMS)?
A product installed on a web server that allows managing
pages, blogs and articles online, without storing them on a
desktop computer and uploading each time when you need to
make changes. Simply login to your website, write or modify
content, and then your website is updated instantly. There can
be multiple administrators or editors, each with their own
defined user roles.
11. CMS
CMS provide separation between articles and web
design, thus allowing you to focus on writing
content and not worry about copying the web
design from page to page.
CMS products can also automatically update
menus and links between pages based on the list
of articles you create, therefore you don’t need to
worry about your website becoming broken when
you rename pages.
12. Drupal, Joomla & WordPress
In todays market for CMS – you will be faced with 3 choices
WordPress, Drupal, and Joolma.
All three are written in the PHP programming language, and are licensed under the
free GNU General Public License (GPL), and all depend on the MySQL database to
hold and manage the actual content within a website. All offer extensions/add-
ons, plugins, themes and or templates galore.
13. Installation
In our opinion, WordPress wins hands down
when it comes to installation simplicity and
ease of use. WordPress has made a point
about getting its installation process down to
mere moments of your time. (5 minutes).
The way WordPress handles all articles as
either posts in a blog or a page on the site is
intuitive for new users to grasp. Location of
content and widgets is handled by dropping
them within pre-set locations within a given
theme.
14. Hosting
Hosted or Self hosted? Hosted via
WordPress.com you do not have to download
software, pay for hosting or manage a web
server.
When you sign up for a WordPress.com
blog, you will get a URL like
―andy.wordpress.com‖. or you can map a
domain so your blog is available at
―example.com‖ without the ―.wordpress.com‖
portion. No control over the
software, database, no FTP access and no
uploading of themes or plugins.
15. cPanel
For your self hosted site, WordPress is free but
, you will need a domain name and monthly
webhosting for your site. A domain name
registration will run around $10 per year and
hosting can be around $7 a month, leaving the
total cost of your new web site well under $100
per year.
We like this best as you own and hold your
content, and can use which ever themes and
plugins you want. Many hosts offer an easy one
click install of Wordpress via their cPanel.
.
16. Themes, Plugins & Widgets
The combination of these 3 effects the
design, layout, usability of your WordPress web
site.
There are literally thousands of each to choose
from.
Free and premium (paid) alike.
Allowing you to start your CMS that can scale
quite well into a more complex site as your
needs grow.
17. Themes
A WordPress Theme is a collection of files that work
together to produce a graphical interface with an
underlying unifying design for a weblog.
A Theme modifies the way the site is
displayed, without modifying the underlying
software. Themes may include customized template
files, image files (*.jpg, *.gif), style sheets
(*.css), custom Pages, as well as any necessary
code files (*.php).
[source: http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes]
18. Plugins
A Plugin is a small addon
program/application that you
install in WordPress.
Plugins can extend WordPress
to do almost anything you can
imagine.
Think of a need and most likely
there is already a plugin for
that!
19. Widgets
Widgets are plugins, but not all plugins are
widgets! They are useful for putting content on
your site without having to go through the coding
process. All you need to do is drag a certain
widget from the widget area and drop it to the
sidebar or footer area.
Since each widget is uniquely designed for its
function, it’s best to learn about some of the
common widgets usually used for sites before
applying widgets into your WordPress blog. The
text widget can be the most powerful one of all
as you have complete control of it’s contents, but
you will need to learn a little html coding.
20. Content Pages & Posts
Adding and editing pages or blog posts in
WordPress is extremely easy to do.
The WordPress WYSIWYG editor makes this
process simple.
Not only can add/edit your text, but also media
files as well.
There are plugins to extend the functions of the
default editor.
21. Comments
Because comments are so well ingrained into
the blogging mindset, it's no surprise that
WordPress comes with a very robust comment
management system out of the box.
A great freebie for WordPress users is the
availability of the Akismet plug-in, which, when
activated, taps into Akismet's very powerful
comment and trackback spam protection tools.
You do have the choice whether or not to allow
comments on your WordPress site.
22. Layout
Layout styles of your site will depend mainly on the theme your choose. Here is
the typical default layouts. You have the header area, the main content area and
the sidebar area.
23. Adding Social Media Tools
Adding Social Media Buttons to your WordPress Website is an extremely important
part of website promotion.
Why? Well, you have to add the social media buttons onto your website so people
can easily share, save, and bookmark it. There are a few ways to add social
media buttons to your WordPress website. One is to do it manually ( ugg code! )
and the other is to use a plug-in. There are many social media plugins to choose
from.
24. Headers
The header area of your site will most likely contain your logo. A header image
adds to the visual experience of your blog or website. It is a graphic image at the
top of the web page that gives a unique identity to your blog/website. Again your
choose of theme will dictate the size and design of your header. Additional
information, such as opt-in forms, social sharing icons, can be added to this area to
make the most of the space.
25. Backgrounds
One small change can give your site a completely different
look? Choose between fixed full screen background, full width
scrolling background, or classic non-scaled backgrounds.
Whether you choose images, solid colors or patterns the design
possibilities are unlimited. Many sites have header
backgrounds, content backgrounds and footer backgrounds.
Depending on your choice of theme adding and customizing the
background will differ slightly.
The color scheme that you use on your web site can entice the
visitor to engage in the goal of your site (i.e. make a purchase
or request your services) or leave it after the first few seconds
so pick your color scheme carefully.
26. Navigation Menus
By far one of the most important aspects if you website is the easy of navigation for
your user. You want your information easily reached no matter which page the user
is on. Do not create a maze of hidden pages.
Menu placement can be above the header and/or below the header, or even along
side of the logo image.
WordPress allows you to create custom menus as easily as checking a box to select
which item you want to have displayed. Menus items can be
pages, posts, categories from within your site and custom urls from outside of your
site. The styling of the navigation menu will also depend on your theme.
27. Footers
Footers are often an overlooked aspect of
designing a site when actually they can be a very
useful area to display information.
Some themes will give you the option to have
different footer information displayed on the
homepage then on the inside pages of your site.
28. Summary
WordPress offers so many features especially when you
factor in the unlimited design and functions with the use of
themes, plugins and widgets. Many premium themes
come with their own widgets and plugins ready to use.
We have only touched on the ―tip of the iceberg‖ in this
tutorial.
We find WodPress to be a robust and dynamic CMS
capable of growing with your needs. WordPress follows
all the Web Standards, keeping your blog or website
compliant to all the rules that have to be followed when
running a website. SEO Friendly, Search Engines love
clean code someyhing you need to definitely kept in mind
when building a website. WordPress uses different
functions which allow it to be search engine friendly.
29. Our Services
Being Passionate comes easy when you
genuinely enjoy what you do. We offer an
array of services at Supernova Media but
here’s what we do best:
• Web Design & Hosting
• Consulting
• Branding
• Virtual Tours
We know that your success is our success.
Contact Us
30. About Nancy Bain
Nancy is a business owner, educator, and business strategist
with more than 20 years experience. When she is not advising
and teaching people about social media, Nancy spends a lot of
her own time using social media.
Find Nancy online:
Google+ : Nancy Bain Like Supernova Media on
Follow Nancy on Twitter Facebook
Visit her Website Find her on LinkedIn
Follow her Blog And visit her YouTube Channel