PE4 - WordPress

I have decided to become efficient in WordPress since I am planning my capstone around developing a site for Martin Productions with it.  I am just under the 3 hour mark in my 5 1/2 hour journey.  While most of this information has been rudimentary, there are small tasks/skills in each section that I would not know on my own, if not for sitting through this and practicing the skills as I go.  Having said that, let me share with you some of my journey!

The first three sections were geared towards understanding the tool and getting signed up for an account.  Once that was completed we jumped right into navigating the administrative side and designing the basic layout and theme of our site.  This part is hard for me, I probably tried 10 different themes before committing to one, which I probably will change again!  Here are a few that I tried, the last being the current look of my site.

The program then took you through all of the posting options, from basic to advanced.  The posting tool box is similar to most blogs and/or word processing programs we have used.     However, walking through all the options made me feel more comfortable with using this tool to it's full potential.  The Admin Post panel looks like this....

Luckily this format is familiar to me and not intimidating at all.  The tutorial walked me though each icon in the tool bar (the second row of tools is called the kitchen sink, I thought that was funny). There are many ways to alter/protect posts, you can even password protect posts.  I personally was thinking if you have to password protect a post, you probably shouldn't post it.  While only people with the password could access, we all know that it could easily get into the wrong hands.  

The next session focused on adding, editing and customizing pages.  One of the options I really enjoyed learning was the ability to take features away from certain pages.  For example, on my contact page I do not need or want a comments box.  I simply need to list the contact information.  In the admin panel you can change that feature for that particular page, which I did.

The next session was based on multimedia.  Wordpress lets you post most document styles, but does not support movies/audio.  To get around this issue you must have your media posted somewhere else on the web and link to it through the url. While this is a slight inconvenience, getting around it isn't really a big deal.  You just use a video hosting site, like YouTube or Viddler, upload it there and then use the url link.

The last sections I completed this round involved managing posts, tags and categories.  This was important for me to organize my posts and site as well as for my future navigators to get around easier.  The more user friendly my site is, the more likely they are to return.

And the Journey Continues....