Nonfiction Media - WordPress

From Help Wiki

Why a Wordpress site?

Getting started with a new web site

  • Go to http://blogs.evergreen.edu to create your acount and blog. See Creating a new blog for detailed instructions.
  • Dashboard overview
  • Change the site's title and subtitle Settings > General
  • Privacy settings - control who can see your site or if search engines will index your site Settings > Privacy

Writing and Managing your content

  • Creating posts
  • Using the rich text editor
  • Images, media and linking to files
  • Controlling commenting & publishing
    • set your comment preferences for all new pages/posts Settings > Discussion
  • Pages versus Posts
  • Creating pages and your site's navigation
    • working with sub-pages
  • Editing already existing pages and posts

Designing your site

  • Trying out new Themes Appearance > Themes
  • Customize your header or banner 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)

Important: Find a theme that meets your layout requirements.

Menus

New to WordPress3 is a way to control your site's navigational menus. From the dashboard choose Appearance > Menus

  • Look in Theme locations to see if your chosen theme supports the new WordPress3 menu system.

Modify Your Sidebar with widgets

Add functionality to your site's sidebar(s) Appearance > Widget

Working with sidebar links

  • creating and managing sidebar links
  • displaying sidebar links via widgets

Working with categories and tags

  • useful for categorizing different types of posts. A category page for each is automatically created. Use the Category Widget to display in your sidebar.

Customize the CSS of your theme with Custom CSS

You can write custom CSS to override the theme's CSS. Go Appearance > Custom CSS

You'll need to learn a bit about how your theme is structured. Some great tools for this are:

  • Firefox Firebug
  • Firefox's Web Developer Toolbar
  • Safari's Develop Menu


Plugins

Plugins add functionality to your site. To use them use must first activate. Some useful plugins include:

  • Flickr Gallery

Things to know about your blog

Additional Resources