UNIVERSITY OF CYPRUS PUBLIC AND BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION DEPARTMENT

Transcription

1 UNIVERSITY OF CYPRUS PUBLIC AND BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION DEPARTMENT : Management Information Systems Introduction to WordPress What is WordPress? WordPress ( is a platform which allows you to create blogs. Their name is an abbreviation of the word weblogs, since they resemble a frequently updated journal of personal ideas and views in chronological order (usually reverse). Blogs can serve various purposes. The extensive diversity presented in the blog showcase of WordPress ( indicates the equally extensive personalization options offered by WordPress. This brief presentation of WordPress covers the basic options offered by the platform. It should be used as an aid during the first steps of a novice blog creator. Those interested in extending their knowledge on the topic should be covered by the plethora of manuals and tutorials on the web. Webpage creation in WordPress Visit and register in the WordPress service by clicking on the sign-up now. Choose the blog address. Select the free option wordpress.com as the extension of your address. Choose username, password and the address to relate with your blog. You may choose any username, while your could be the one provided by the university or a personal . Note that you will have to activate your WordPress account from an that will be sent in the address you have defined. Select the preferred language depending on your preference. Select the free option «Create Blog». You now have the option to complete your personal data, even though this is not required for the blog operation. At this point your blog has been created. You can review it at the address you chose in the previous steps 1

2 (e.g. ) Initially, your blog consists of a single article (post) titled Hello World, which you can later update or delete. In addition, your blog initially has only one page, titled About. At the top of the screen you can see your username. Hovering your mouse over it will give you the option to visit the control panel (Dashboard) of your blog. You have the option to set your blog temporarily inaccessible by other users by clicking Settings à Privacy and then selecting I would like my site to be private, visible only to users I choose. In this case, you must be logged on to WordPress in order to view your blog. Banning access is useful while you are working on your blog s structure and content. You may enable public access again by selecting Allow search engines to index this site, as soon as you are ready. ATTENTION: if you wish to make your blog temporarily private you will have to remember to update its visibility for the assignment grading. Creating static content pages Static content pages are useful for hosting content that is not updated regularly. For example, you may have a page titled Hobbies, where you mention your personal interests, as well as a page named About me, in which you mention some basic information about you. In addition, a page could be a parent of another. For example, page Hobbies could have two child pages named Cars and Sports, in which the user writes separately for these two hobbies. For example, in my personal webpage in WordPress ( hovering the mouse over My Courses displays the extra options PBA132 and, since I have defined these pages to have as parent the page My courses. Let s see now how to create pages and how to select parent pages. From Dashboard, select Pages and then All pages. Here you can see all pages included in your blog (initially just a page About). Hovering the mouse over a page, you can select to edit or erase it (trash). You can return to this page any time you wish to update an existing page. 2

3 and: To create a new page, select again from Pages the option Add New Define a title at the top of the page. Type the page text in the textbox. Select the page parent on the right of the screen (or leave the predefined no-parent). Optionally, you could select from the top of the screen the Screen Options and then Discussion, which will present -at the bottom of the screen- the discussion options. You may deselect the option allow comments and allow trackbacks in order to prohibit your visitors from posting comments. Finally, click Publication to the right of the screen. Your page has been published. You can view it by clicking on your username, on the top left of the screen. Creating categories Categories can be accessed from the Dashboard, via Posts à Categories. Categories refer to posts in your blog and not pages, allowing you to group them according to their basic topic. In case you will not use categories, grouping can only be performed chronologically, which will make searching more difficult for your readers. 3

4 Before writing your first post, you should create at least a category to assign to it. You should be aware though that WordPress has a preset category (conveniently named Uncategorized), which is assigned to all articles that don t have an explicit category assignment. On the right part of the screen you can see all categories you have created (currently only the predefined Uncategorized), while the left part is where you create new categories. To create a new category, all you have to do is choose a name and click on Add new category. The description is optional and the option parent could remain in the predefined No. (This shows that categories can also have a parent-child relationship. For example, you may have category Travel as parent to categories Travel in Europe and Travel the World). Based on the information above you can now create your first category. If required, you may return to the category page for any updates. Creating the first post Posts are the blog content you add frequently. All posts are presented in a special page of your blog, frequently called Home. However, you should be aware that it does not appear in the list of pages you can view by clicking Pages on the Dashboard. 4

5 By clicking Posts à All posts, you can view the list of articles in your blog. Initially, the only article appearing is the article titled Hello World. You can revisit this screen every time you wish to delete or update an existing article. Clicking Posts à Add New takes you to the screen for generating new posts: Insert the post title at the top. Write the post body. In case your article contains a link: you type, select with the mouse the word or phrase that contains the link and click on the icon with the link ( Insert/Edit link ). In the URL field you type the destination address. In order to add a image/photograph related to your article, you click button Add Media, right after Upload/Insert and follow the instructions. Select the article s category. Select the article s format from the right part of the screen, under the heading Format. For the first articles choose Standard. Afterwards, you can experiment with different formats in order to see the way WordPress formats different types. For example, the Gallery format is suitable in case your post consists mainly of photographs. In contrast to page creation, you usually don t want to disable reader comments in your posts. Therefore, you will leave the related option as it is. In case the option is not visible, you have to select (from the top of the screen) Screen Options à Discussion. Add on the bottom right part of the screen (under Categories) some keywords (tags), which describe the article s contents, separated with comma (, ) and press button Add. Finally, press Publish, to the right. 5

6 Your article has been published. You can view it by hovering the mouse cursor over your username, on the top left part of the screen. Personalizing your blog Beyond the basic creation of pages, categories and articles, WordPress allows extensive personalization of a blog. You may experiment freely with the various options and validate instantly the way they affect your blog. In case you don t approve them, you may return to your previous options. For example, you may update the navigational menu of your page, change photos which accompany the blog, create a different start page, add pages that include posts of specific categories etc. When you perform any updates on your page by using option Edit, you should always click Update. Only then updates get activated and posted to your blog. Themes Your blog s final appearance depends on the theme used. It is easier to understand the way themes influence appearance by experimenting with the various theme options. The initial theme used by WordPress (unless you updated it) is random. However, choosing Appearance à Theme, allows you to update the format of your blog by choosing among the vast number of free themes. For each selected new theme, you have the option to validate updates instantly. There is the option for testing the new theme, during which you examine your blog with the new appearance, in order to choose whether you would like to set the updates as permanent. 6

7 Widgets The widgets present special interest. Usually, the pages in your posts have points in which you can add widgets (even though this depends on the selected theme). For example, in many themes like Twenty Ten and Twenty Eleven, there are 4 points in which you can add widgets. The first is the Main Sidebar, which is usually to the right of the posts. The remaining three (Footer Area One,Two,Three) are usually at the bottom of the page. Widgets are accessible from option Appearance à Widgets. In order to include a widget, you simply select it from the left side of the screen and drag&drop it to the Main Sidebar or one of the three Footer Areas. For example, dragging and dropping widget Statistics to the main sidebar and storing your option will enable the presentation -on home screen- of the total visits to your page (including visits from your computer). Note that since widgets are not available for all themes, the specific widget may not available for your selected theme. Changing home screen If you prefer, you can use a specific page of the blog as the home screen, thus forcing visitors to navigate to the page including the posts. The way to implement it is the following: Create a static content page to serve as the home page, according to instructions for the creation of static pages. You should name it accordingly (e.g. home page ). Create a static content page to host your posts and name it accordingly (e.g. My blog ). From Settings à Reading, update the first option so that the first page no longer displays your latest posts. Choose Static Page and then select the static page Home page as Front Page and the static page My blog as Posts page. Using WordPress to create static website without blog After changing the home page, you could use WordPress to create a static webpage without using a blog. You can use the personalized menu from option Appearance à Menu, in which you omit the link for the page My blog, thus hiding from your visitors the blog functionality. Using personalized menus is beyond the purpose of this brief presentation. However, it is easy to find additional information on the internet or the Help function of WordPress. Featured Images Many of the themes of WordPress (such as Twenty Ten and Twenty Eleven ), use images/photographs as Featured Images (check the bottom right section of image Add New Page in page 3). A Featured Image differs 7

8 from other images you insert in a post (as instructed above). Featured Images could be added to posts or pages, by clicking on the related link on the bottom right part of the new post or page screen. The way a Featured Image will be presented is different between themes. For example, in theme Twenty Eleven, a Featured Image will display on the top of the screen as a wide photograph with dimensions 1000x288 pixels. Theme Twenty Eleven, as most themes, allow from option Appearance à Header àupload Image, to select the image(s) that will appear on all pages without a selected Featured Image. Most themes require your images to have minimum dimensions in order to appear. In order to be informed of the minimum dimensions of each theme, you should visit screen Appearance à Header. In case you would like to crop a photo to the exact dimensions of a theme, you could use the free tool Picasa, available from Google in picasa.google.com. Images and Photographs for your blog In case you would like to enrich your content with images and photographs from the Internet, you should verify that the image creator allows you to do so. As a general rule, you should look for images and photographs with a CC (Creative Commons) license from their owner. There are different options in the CC license; however, non-commercial use with a proper attribution is almost always granted. You can find more information in: where you can easily locate pictures, even for commercial purposes. Useful links for searching CC material are the following:

9 Using HTML Basic HTML knowledge is helpful when creating web pages and blogs, but it is not necessary for using the WordPress.com platform. Overall, each time you write text for a new page or post, you do it in the Text writer available from WordPress. In case you know HTML, you can click Text and enter directly HTML. Example of using HTML: inserting Google Maps As an example, you can select in Google Maps (maps.google.com) a map that you would like to insert in a page. Upon locating the map, you select the link and copy the line under the title Paste HTML to embed in website. This line includes the HTML you need to paste in the wordpress box you get when you click Text when editing your post. The process is described in more detail in the following link: Using Windows Live Writer as a word processor and presentation manager Beyond the tools offered by WordPress, it is possible to use Windows Live Writer (WLW) as a word processor and presentation manager for pages and posts in WordPress. This tool is available for free from Microsoft, for the Windows operating system. The advantages of WLW include the availability of more tools (e.g. tables), allowing additional formatting options. You could shift from Edit to Preview and Source (HTML) at any point. 9

10 You could use WLW in two ways: The first is to write text in WLW and directly publish it as a post. The second and more suitable for formatting static content pages, is to write text in WLW, copy HTML and paste it in your post s Text. More details on the installation and use of WLW are available in: Publishing your blog In case you haven t already selected to make your blog private, visible only to users I choose, you do not have to perform any additional steps to make it accessible for visitors. In case you did, click Settings à Privacy and update the first choice according to your preference. Your blog should now be available to the public. 10