Activities for my WordPress class through Girl Develop It.

1. WordPress Class Activities
1. Set Up Wordpress.com (if the class hasn’t done so)
If you haven’t already, create a Wordpress.com username and password.
Next, click on “My Sites” and on the left hand sidebar, click “Add new Wordpress”

2. Choose a name for the blog address (must all be different, so come up with
something creative!).
Name your blog “My GDI Blog”. For Privacy settings, set to “Private” for our class’
purposes. Your blog or website would be set to “Everyone”.

3. Click “Create Blog”.
You’ll see a welcome screen. Click “View Dashboard”.
2. Create a Page and a Post
From your dashboard, hover on “Post” on the left hand side. You’ll see some
choices. Choose “Add New”.

4. Give the post a title. Titles should be short but descriptive. This title will be “Test
Post”.
Type in some content as well.
“This is my very first Wordpress post. I am sure that my future posts will be far
more interesting, but for right now, this will have to do. Some other sites I like to
visit are CNN, Girl Develop It and I Can Haz Cheezburger.”
Once you’re done, click “Publish”. If you wanted, you could click “Edit” next to
“Publish Immediately” and schedule it for a future time. You have your first post!
4. Add links and pictures
From your post page, click “Edit”. First, let’s add some links.
Highlight “CNN”. Click the button in the toolbar that looks like a chain link. That’s
the “Insert Link” button.

5. In the URL box, type in: http://cnn.com. In the title box, type in “CNN”. Tick “Open
link in a new window/tab. Click add link. Repeat for the following:
Girl Develop It = http://girldevelopit.com, Title = Girl Develop It
I Can Has Cheezburger = http://icanhascheezburger.com = I Can Has Cheezburger
Now you have three links.
While we’re at it, let’s add a picture. Click on the space before the first word in your
paragraph, then click “Add Media”. If you have your own pictures, you can grab
them from your desktop but we will be using another photo’s URL, so click on the
“From URL” tab. Use this URL for the picture:
http://dailytwocents.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Grumpy_Cat.jpg
For the title, put in “grumpy cat”.
For alternate text (this is used for screen readers), put in “Grumpy Cat”.
Skip the image caption. Left align. Click link image to this URL (we’ll talk about why
in a bit):

6. 5. Create Categories and Tags
Categories are used to organize your page. Tags are used to tag your content, to
make it more easily searchable by both your readers and by search engines.
To add a category, click “Add new category” under Categories on the right hand bar.
Type in “Daily Thoughts” as your new category and click “Add New Category”.

7. You can subcategorize if you want them—for example, “Daily Thoughts” could have
a subcategory of “Politics”, “Religion”, “TV”—or whatever you’re thinking about.
Tags tell search engines what your post is about, as well as your readers. Click on
the Tags box and type in your tags (separated by commas): blogging, cats and click
“Add”.
6. Create a User
Sometimes, you want more than one user for a blog.
Click on “All Users” to see your users. To add a user, click “Invite new”. Enter in the
following email address:

8. test@test.com
Then choose the role. If you want someone to have administrative rights to the blog,
choose “Administrator”. “Editor” can’t change the back end of the blog, but can edit
all posts, pages and comments. Authors can edit their own posts. Contributors can
edit their posts but can’t publish them—an editor needs to approve it. Viewers can
only view posts.
For our purposes, let’s select “contributor”.
7. Manage Comments
You can edit, delete and “spam” comments in your blog. Click on Comments, and
you’ll see where comments would be if you had one. If you’d like, give your
neighbor your blog URL and they can make a comment.
We will talk in class about other commenting systems as well as Akismet, which
helps control spam.
8. Add a Widget to your Sidebar
Wordpress.com provides lots of different widgets to add to your sidebar. Click
“Appearance” and then “Widgets” and then simply drag and drop the button for the
sidebar you wish. Save after you have given them a title or filled in whichever
information is needed. For example, for the Twitter widget, put in “girldevelopit” as
your Twitter username, then hit save.