In Class 18 of Introduction to WordPress, we covered troubleshooting WordPress including:
Below is also the criteria for the Class Project presentations this week.
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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 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-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 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 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 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.
In Class 15 of Introduction to WordPress, we covered:
In Class 14 of Introduction to WordPress, we covered:
The following resources are for those who develop WordPress Plugins and WordPress Themes and wish to release them to the public and include them in the WordPress official directories, WordPress Plugin Directory and WordPress Theme Directory.
It is highly recommended that you read “A Love Letter to WordPress Plugin Authors” with tips for WordPress Plugin and Theme authors on how to ensure your audience finds your WordPress goodness.
WordPress is an open source publishing platform for the web. It allows easy content management and publishing via the web browser to the web. There are three versions of WordPress.
WordPress, the self-hosted version of WordPress, is often called “dot org” or “full version.” It is the version of WordPress used by those with paid hosting services or “self-hosted.”
The is the most flexible of the WordPress versions as the user can choose from any WordPress Theme and customize it fully or create their own, and add any WordPress Plugin, script or custom code to their site. The self-hosted version of WordPress can be used by beginner or expert.
This version is appropriate for any individual or company.
WordPress.com is the hosted version of WordPress, a blog hosting service where anyone can sign up for a free blog and have their say on the web. Millions of blogs are hosted by WordPress.com and many blogs host multiple authors.
WordPress.com is often called the “limited” or “free version” which is not completely true. WordPress.com is limited only in the fact that you must comply with the WordPress.com Terms of Service and cannot install WordPress Plugins or unapproved WordPress Themes, but much of the most popular WordPress Plugin features and needs of typical bloggers are provided such as integrated stats, social media integration, comment spam protection, writing and linking help options, and more through built-in options and optional WordPress Widgets. Users can pay a small annual fee to customize their WordPress Themes for original designs, breaking the template look many hosting services offer. A variety of custom options are available for a small annual fee such as domain remapping (having your own dot com and not subdomain URL), additional space, video uploading and storage, unlimited private users, etc.
WordPress.com is often thought of as the “baby” beginner version of WordPress as it requires no technical expertise to use, however do not underestimate its lack of code interaction. It is a WordPress blog with its own powerful abilities under the hood. It is exceptionally SEO-friendly and updated more frequently and faster than the self-hosted version of WordPress which requires administrative action to update. Thus it is a safe and secure publishing environment.
WordPress.com is also the demo and testing version of WordPress for the WordPress Foundation development team. New features are often tested in a limited or widespread across the WordPress.com network before they are included in the final release for the self-hosted version of WordPress.
WordPress.com also offers a VIP version where site owners can literally get hand-holding service from WordPress.com staff and developers. This doesn’t come cheap but for many companies, it’s cheaper than their current hosting plans and services. Examples include CNN, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, All Things Digital, Time Inc., People Magazine, Flickr, NFL, and many more. Free WordPress.com users benefit from the funding these companies provide as well as the code developed through those sites and services.
This version is appropriate for any individual or business.
The third version of WordPress is called WordPress MS, Multisite, or Blog Network. Built into the self-hosted version of WordPress and the engine running WordPress.com, WordPress MS allows site owners to host more than one blog on their site as subdomains. This is ideal for businesses with different departments, schools, non-profits, and companies wishing to offer compartmentalized content run by different administrators and authors.
WordPress MS is not for those who wish to run or install multiple blogs from one interface. There are several WordPress Plugins that make this process easier. WordPress MS creates two levels of users. The Super Admin manages the entire network, controlling the various options and features each individual blog or the entire network has access. Individual blog “owners” or administrators control their own blogs and generally have no access to the other sites on the network. The Super Admin can set the site to look seamless between subdomains, or allow each subdomain administrator to design their own look and feel, much like WordPress.com blogs.
While the option to choose a single installation WordPress or the multisite installation is only a few click option during the WordPress install, choosing the multisite version is not for the faint-hearted and code-phobic folks. It requires familiarity and some expertise with WordPress, PHP, JavaScript, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Themes, and web hosting. Those using a blog on WordPress MS require none of that expertise.
If you just want to have your say, choose WordPress.com.
If you want to play with code, choose WordPress.
If you wish to have ads and monetize your site, choose WordPress.
If you wish to have multiple authors and no wish for ads, choose WordPress.com.
If you wish to have an intricately designed site with a customized Theme, choose WordPress.
If you wish to have multiple authors with complete control over their independent blogs, choose WordPress MS.
If you wish to have various departments or agencies represented with their own sites within the network, choose WordPress MS.
