WordPress:  Class 2

1.  Review

• What is WordPress?
• What language is used to write WordPress?
• What is the difference between a website and a blog?
• What is the difference between posts and pages?
• What is Dashboard?
• What is a domain?
• When do you use 72 dpi, 140 dpi, and 300 dpi?

TEXTBOOK

• No textbook is required

SESSIONS

• 4 sessions
  
• Campus map can be found here.

Jessi's OnBelayBlog Files

3.  Revisiting themes:  Customizer

• Take another look at the different FREE themes offered in WordPress
• Click on "Customize" to further edit your selected theme
  • Site Title, Tagline, and Logo
  • Colors and Background
  • Fonts
• Remember to hit "Save and Publish" after you make changes

4.  Organizing the structure of your site:  Primary Menus

• WordPress allows users the capability to create menus. These are simply navigational elements that you can add to your website to make it more functional and easier to navigate for your users
• ​Review your worksheet to see which pages you would like to add to your site
• Log in to www.wordpress.com
• Click on "Menus" in the Dashboard
• Click on Primary Menu.  You will see your default menus with your theme here, but you can modify pages in your menu!
• • Adding pages:  Click on the "+" sign to add additional pages or rename current pages
  • Deleting pages:  Click on the trash can to delete a page
• Make sure to hit "save" when done to commit your changes
• You can drag and reorder your pages at any time to create submenu items

5.  Linking to social media:  Social Menus

• How to link to your social media accounts

6.  Editing content on pages​​

• Pencil Edit Icon - clicking this allows you to further edit and customize a particular section

7.  Key terms/concepts

• Customizer - allows you to preview changes to your site before publishing them. You can also navigate to different pages on your site to preview them.
• Primary Menu - main menu selected as primary menu in the WordPress Menu Editor. A WordPress theme may support single or multiple navigational menus at different locations in theme. Multiple menu areas on your site (primary, social)
• Social Menu - menu that allows for links to various social media sites, like Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. 
• Plugins - ways to extend and add to the functionality that already exists inWordPress. The core of WordPress is designed to be lean and lightweight, to maximize flexibility and minimize coding. Plugins then offer custom functions and features so that each user can tailor their site to their specific needs.
• Copy - another word for text
• Widgets - a small block that performs a specific function. You can add widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user.

8.  WordPress Plugins

9.  WordPress Widgets

• Go to Themes --> Customize --> Widgets
• Adding, removing, and moving Widgets

​10.  Working with Images

• The size and quality of an image for use on a web page is determined by a variety of things:
  • ​Physical Size - The physical size of an image is based upon two things: The size of the image on the screen and the file size. Generally, the file size is treated as a different issue.
  • File Size - This is the size of the file; the size dictates the time it takes to load your page, the larger the file size, often increased because of a high image resolution quality, the longer it will take to load. People often don't have the patience to wait through long web page loads, so keeping your file sizes low speeds up your web page access times. Typically, large high quality images should be kept between 100K and 60K. Smaller images should be closer to 30K and lower.
    • ​Maximum file size is 1 GB, but it can slow down your site!
  • Resolution - Resolution refers to the number of pixels in an image. Resolution is sometimes identified by the width and height of the image as well as the total number of pixels in the image.
  • File Type - There are basically X image types popularly found on the Internet: jpeg, gif, and png
    • ​jpg (JPEG) is good for photographs. Saving a photo as jpg removes detail from the photo. Good photo editors let you control how much detail is removed (the "compression"). Different photos need different compression; doing this carefully and viewing the result can give you a usable photo with a small file size.
    • gif can be poor for photographs. It's better for line art, like logos, with solid areas of the same color, and animation
    • png is for both photographs and line art. It compresses photos without losing detail, but usually makes larger photo files than JPEGs. Some older browsers don't completely support png, though.

11. Adding a blog post

• Go to Dashboard --> Publish --> Blog Posts  -->  Add

• Edit bar:
  • Add media
  • Adjust paragraph to heading settings, etc.
  • Bold/italic
  • Bulleted/numbered lists
  • Inserting links properly
  • Block quote
  • Justification
  • Spell check
  • Toggle advanced
  • HTML

12.  Exercise/Homework

• Create a minimum of 3 pages or posts
• Make sure they include copy and imagery