WordPress Intro – Summer 2012: Week Two Homework Tuesday

In Class 3 of Introduction to WordPress, we covered:

  • More on what can go into a WordPress blog post.
    • WordPress.com Shortcodes.
    • Uploading multimedia and publishing it.
  • Organizational structure of Posts, Pages, Categories, and Tags
  • WordPress Theme introduction
    • How to use a sandbox post text file for testing WordPress Themes and post content HTML.
    • Introduction to the WordPress Loop
    • WordPress Pageviews
    • Post Formats
    • Changing WordPress Themes
    • Basic WordPress Theme customization

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Introduction to WordPress Class 18 – Troubleshooting WordPress

In Class 18 of Introduction to WordPress, we covered troubleshooting WordPress including:

  • Determining what exactly is breaking or not working within WordPress.
  • Identifying where to get help.
  • Troubleshooting methods for post content, WordPress Themes, WordPress Plugins, and servers.

Below is also the criteria for the Class Project presentations this week.
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Introduction to WordPress – Special Guest Panel

Our Introduction to WordPress class is honored tonight with five fascinating business people, each one using WordPress in different ways. This is the time to get all your WordPress questions asked and answered by WordPress users, designers, and developers, especially questions associated with your final class projects. The group represents all levels of WordPress expertise.

Kim GreenhouseKim Greenhouse is the producer of It’s Rainmaking Time!™ — Amazing Breakthroughs, Conversations, and Discoveries for Everyone, a multimedia publishing company focused on new and ancient knowledge, solutions, and discoveries – uncovering the “truth behind the news.” Recent podcast episodes include Finding Light in the Thick, Dark Fog about social inequality and cultural oppression for a small group of Native Americans, Is Something Fishy About Fish Oil? on the true impact of the fish oil supplement, A Real Life Da Vinci Code about the Chinese arriving in the Americas before Columbus, Healthy & Safe Dentistry, and New Hope for the World on Internet privacy, freedom of speech, and economics in Iceland.

dan portis-cathersDan Portis-Cathers of Deep Sea Music is an award-winning composer for film and television and a specialist in music production and sound design, and developer of computer music applications. His original music is exceptionally diverse ranging from country-western to jazz, from children songs to alternative rock and roll and funky sports themes. He’s released more than 30 albums in traditional and digital formats. Intimate Guitar Suites is his music catalog store featuring his own work and fellow artists from around the country. Dan is in the digital design, development, and marketing program at Portland State University and converting his sites over to WordPress, integrating custom JavaScript, jQuery, and AJAX scripts.

Scott KritzerScott Kritzer is a classical guitar artist and performer, touring world-wide, and a popular teacher in Portland with a large social community and fan club. He created the Kritzer Method, a master program for integrating physiology and guitar technique to promote long-term playing and hand and body health. Scott is the founder of the successful Classical Guitar Immersion Conference (CGI) bringing 20-40 guitar students and professionals from around the world together for an intensive week-long conference annually. He also developed the unique Performance Anxiety Rehab (PAR) workshop to help guitarists overcome stage fright and performance anxiety. Scott converted his static site and active forum to an integrated WordPress site (maintaining the forum) a year ago, making it easy to promote his concerts, classes, and social events as well as share his innovative teaching techniques.

Randy Sandberg of beAutomatedRandy Sandberg is the Software Test Engineer of beAutomated, a web development company specializing in building custom WordPress Plugins for the enterprise market. Their customers are small to large ecommerce and online businesses eager to automate the business process online, especially within the WordPress environment. Examples include custom email and subscription handling, database integration, ecommerce/store integration, migration, and conversion, directory development and management, and other website automation. They’ve created several popular free WordPress Plugins including Benchmark Email Lite emailing management program and beCounted, a unique Plugin that counts up (or down) annual statistics for anything you wish to count such as animal kill statistics, CMS downloads, mobile phone shipments, and the number of mythological created created since arriving on the web page.

Jeff BrockJeff Brock of Jeff Brock Studio is a long-time web designer specializing in designing on WordPress for small businesses, celebrities, and innovative enterprises around the country. He is also a professional photographer, integrating photography with digital arts. He works with beAutomated as a partner, focusing on custom wireframes and frameworks with WordPress. His company offers WordPress installation and upgrades, WordPress Theme and template design and development, WordPress Pluguin creation and modification, content customization, third-party integration, optimization, and graphic design.

Introduction to WordPress Homework – Class 7 – Feeds, Subscriptions and Social Media Integration

In Class 7 of Introduction to WordPress, we cover:

  • How feeds work in WordPress.
  • How to promote and use WordPress feeds.
  • How to create a Subscription Page.
  • Overview of social media integration with WordPress.

Homework

  • Create Subscribe Page with:
    • Description of the Page content.
    • Text link to each feed available on the site (posts, comments, categories, email)
    • Add visual link (and optional image) to sidebar in Text Widget to Subscribe Page.
  • Add Widgets
    • Add Subscribe by Email Widget
    • Add Subscribe by Follow Widget/option
    • Add Feed Links Widget
    • Add Social Media Widgets for Twitter, Facebook, etc.
  • Add Share button on posts
  • Add Like to posts
  • Add Publicize share features with social networks you belong to (LinkedIn at minimum)
  • Use WordPress link shorteners to publicize your blog on social media networks

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Homework: Introduction to WordPress Class 5- Interactivity and WordPress

In Class 5 of Introduction to WordPress, we cover:

  • Introduction to how to comment on WordPress.
  • Overview of Comment Spam and introduction to Akismet WordPress Plugin.
  • How to monitor, manage, and edit comments in WordPress.
  • Introduction to creating a Comments Policy.
  • Introduction to security and privacy concerns within WordPress.

Homework Assignment

  • Profile updated and accurate, and display name set to be “human.”
  • Write a blog post about one of your fellow student’s blog posts to create a trackback.
  • Comment on blogs everywhere, especially fellow students. See if you can get them to come to your site and comment.
  • Add a Comments Policy to your Policies.

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Introduction to WordPress Class 2: What Can You Put in a WordPress Post

In Class 2 -Introduction to WordPress, we cover:

  • Getting Help with WordPress
  • Writing Content Structure and Techniques
  • WordPress Post and Page Editors
  • Writing with HTML
  • Uploading multimedia content into posts
  • Basic Tips for Blog Writing
  • Finding Content
  • Copyright

Homework Assignment

  • Edit your previously published blog posts to meet web standards for content writing written in HTML editor.
  • Write and publish 5 posts with multimedia in HTML.
  • Write and publish 3 posts with blockquotes in HTML (with citations).
  • Write and publish a list post.
  • Create a Policy Page:
    • Add a copyright policy.
    • Go to Creative Commons and find the appropriate license and add it to your Policies Page (with Creative Commons badge/image).
  • Start an article To Do List with ideas for blog posts (anywhere you want, on your blog, Google Doc, etc.). Goal: By the end of week two, you will have a minimum of 5 posts published in every category.
  • Read the Reading Section material.
  • Research and add to schedule:
    • Next WordPress Meetups in Portland (and elsewhere local)
    • Local WordCamps

Reading

The following are recommended reading assignments from the WordPress books in the 24×7 Book program. Please note the notes on book naming conventions and confusion in the class preparation post.

Watching

The following are two very similar videos highlighting the people behind WordPress and how WordPress changes lives. One was done exclusively for the first WordCamp PDX and the other was done for WordCamp Hawaii and the Hawaii Technology Week event.

Extra Credit

During the class, I’ll be offering extra credit opportunities. The first one is to volunteer to answer questions and provide support on the WordPress.com Forums.

The WordPress.com Forums are managed by employees of Automattic and WordPress Community volunteers. I’ve written an article with tips on how to provide support and participate in the WordPress forums. Read “How to Help on the WordPress Support Forums” and its supporting documents before volunteering your efforts.

Please let me know if you are participating on the forum(s). I’ll need to know your WordPress username to verify. And know in advance, WordPress.com users thank you.

Outcome

For those keeping track of overall outcomes, the goals of the second class were:

  • Learning the content management areas of WordPress.
  • Learning the difference and how to use the Visual and HTML Editors.
  • Learning how to include multimedia in a WordPress blog post.
  • Basic blog writing tips with WordPress structure and format.
  • Learning to write in HTML.
  • Overview of WordPress help and support resources.