Walking to Santiago de Compostela - WordPress with Geolocation
Getting Started
- Getting Started with WordPress - What is WordPress and how is it being used at Evergreen?
Create a New WordPress Site
blogs.evergreen.edu is Evergreen's WordPress server. You can create your own site, all you need is an Evergreen email address and login.
- Create your first site if you are new to blogs.evergreen.edu.
- Learn how to create additional sites if you already have a site at blogs.evergreen.edu.
Driving in WordPress
Settings
From your dashboard we need to change some settings in your site
- Settings > General - change your tagline; change your time zone to "Los Angeles"
- Settings > Permalinks - set this to Post name
Change your site visibility
In order for your posts to feed/syndicate to the main class site, Walking to Santiago de Compostela, your own site needs to be publicly viewable.
- Go Settings > Reading - change your site's visibility settings (defaults to Evergreen users only)
- Change this to either Allow search engines or Disallow search engines
Change your display name
You can control how your name appears next to your writings. Remember, these sites will be public so use a name you feel comfortable with being in the public sphere, such as first name and last initial.
- To change your display name, click on Howdy, [your display name] in the upper right corner.
- Click on Edit My Profile
- Enter desired display name in the Nickname (required) field.
- Select and set desired display name using the Display name publicly as drop-down box. Note: this will change all references in your site, even for posts that were already published.
Writing and Managing your content
Content to include in your sites
Example site: Mackintosh's Glasgow
Required sections of your spring field study.
Pages
- Welcome: an "About" page and/or introduction/description for your project
- Map: a global map that uses the GeoMashup plugin to display your geo-located posts
Posts and Categories
- Journal entries that use the location as an organizing principle for each entry including:
- geo-mapping using the GeoMashup Google Maps plugin
- reflections, stories, and comments about your experiences along the trail
- other information relevant to your spring work and travels
- The Where am I? category is for daily check-ins (entry can be brief)
Images, video and linked files
- Insert an image
- Video - embed video from Vimeo or YouTube
- Link to a file
- Image Galleries
- Audio
Sidebars
Many themes support sidebar content. Often times if you don't anything to your side bar a default set of "widgets" will appear. You can change this by adding your own widgets.
- Widgets - add additional features to your sidebar
- Add external links to your sidebar
- Change what your front page displays if you'd prefer a static pages instead of your latest posts (optional).
- Custom Menus - allow you to modify the navigation for your site
- not all themes support custom menus
Designing Your Site
Working with themes
Themes allow you to change the design of your blog at anytime. Changing your theme will not affect the primary content of your site.
- Choose a theme
- Customize your header image - some themes allow for you to add your own header image Appearance > Header Image (may only appear if your chosen theme supports custom header images)
- Make additional changes to your theme (advanced)
Adding functionality to your site with plugins
- Plugin Overview - use plugins to connect your site with a variety of web content including Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc. Want to connect to a popular service that you don't see listed in the available plugins? Let Academic Computing know and we can look into adding it.
- Tip: Plugins can make your site run slower. Only activate those plugins you are planning on using and deactivate any plugins you're not using.
Enable Maps to geolocate your posts
- Activate the GeoMashup Google Maps plugin - you will need this to geolocate your journal entries and also allows you to easily embed a map of each location on every post
- Once activated, make sure to change your GeoMashup Settings to point to you "Map" page as the global map page - see Create a Global Map page
Wrap Up
Additional WordPress Resources
- Built-in Help
- when you're logged into the Dashboard look in the upper right under "Howdy"
- Help is context aware so will show you help based on where you are in the WordPress Dashboard
- Built-in help videos (part of built-in help)
- WordPress Tutorials
- Lynda.com Video Tutorials
Need More Help?
- WordPress Tutorial - for a step-by-step tutorial to get you started
- FAQs - common questions about using WordPress at Evergreen
- All WordPress articles
Still have questions or problems with WordPress, send Academic Computing a message or call the Computer Center at 360-867-6227.