WORDPRESS

101A presentation and hands-

onsession at NetrootsUKBen Furber

@benfurber

A BEGINNER’S GUIDETO WEBSITES

The plan for today’s session

• A bit about me• WordPress - why people keep going

on about it• What makes a good campaign

website?• Tutorial: Setting up your website

A bit about me

• Seven years as a freelance website designer/campaigner

• Two years in house at the TUC, now Asthma UK

• From community websites to international campaigns for MSF

WordPress – why people keep going on about it

• Used by ‘Dear Diary’ bloggers through to government departments

• It’s easy to use• Open Source= Good Politics

(This also this means it’s free!)

• It’s easy to use• Designers and developers love it• Clients love it too (because it’s easy to

use)

Organisations using WordPress

New York Times

Liberal Conspiracy

Number 10

It’s easy to use!

It’s really easy to use You’ll see in a second

Open source= Good politics

• WordPress is an open source, collaborative project

• Thousands upons thousands have contributed to its development

• Not for personal profit but to help improve one of the internet’s seminal pieces of software

• (And because of all this, WordPress is free to use)

What makes a good campaign website?

• Meets the objectives– If it’s a campaign website, it should get

people to campaign

• Tells everyone about you– Has a well written about page and a

contacts page

• Use everything you have– Got photos? Use photos!

The hands-on bit

Go to www.wordpress.com

And sign-up!

What to do with your website now?• Be patient– Something about ‘Rome’ and ‘days’ comes to

mind

• Update regularly – not often– Be consistent with how often you publish news

• Engage and promote– Use social media to comment on uses and

drive traffic to your website

If you remember just one thing from today...

Everything you need to know is at

http://learn.wordpress.com/

Thanks for coming

Ben Furber@benfurber