WordPress Training Seminar - Vorian Agency

WordPressTraining Seminar

Wednesday 12th March, 2014 10:00am – 12:00pm

Matt Lynch• General Manager of Vorian Agency – Delivering integrated online and offline marketing

solutions to business wrestling with how to market in today’s changing environment.

• With over 20 years Information Technology and Online Marketing Experience, primary speciality being Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), working both within agency and in-house roles as a digital marketing specialist.

• Enjoys keeping up with the 'bleeding edge' of technology advancements and social media evolvement to ensure current knowledge in an ever changing landscape, leading to early adoption and determination of opportunity for marketing enhancement.

• Local, national and international project experience particularly in the field of Travel with companies such as Trafalgar Tours, The Travel Corporation brand and travel properties, Stella Travel and Best Flights; Matt has earned a reputation as an online marketing expert and search evangelist for thoroughness, quality, technical knowledge and success driven results. Matt's previous role was as the Global Online Marketing Manager for Trafalgar, coordinating the online marketing efforts with international teams for this global brand.

Your Presenter: Vorian Agency General Manager

Connect with Matt…

LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/in/mattlynchseo

About Me: http://about.me/au.mattlynch

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattrlynch

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattrlynch

Google+: https://plus.google.com/100121124281684757846

Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/mattrlynch

Instagram: http://instagram.com/#mattrlynch

FourSquare: https://foursquare.com/mattrlynch

Klout: http://klout.com/#/mattrlynch

Email: [email protected]

Interactive Questions?During today’s session, you are welcome to tweet

questions to our Vorian Agency Twitter Account @vorianagency using the hashtag #voriantraining

https://twitter.com/vorianagency

HousekeepingBefore we start, please note the following:

• Exits

• Toilets

• Mobile Phones on Silent

• Question & Answer session at end of the Presentation

• A link to the Presentation Slide Notes and Video will be emailed to you

• Vorian Agency info packs are provided to showcase our service offering

• Vorian staff are available to arrange an appointment or answer specific questions

• Please provide your feedback on today’s seminar on the supplied questionnaire

• Please invite others you may know to register for our free seminar series

In today’s session…We’re going to walk through an introduction to the world’s most popular Content Management System (CMS) - WordPress.

• What is WordPress

• Blogs as well as Websites

• WordPress Themes

• PHP and MySQL – the building blocks of WordPress

• Tips and Techniques of using WordPress

• Upgrade cycle

• Editing

• Optimisation, Compatibility, Validation, Link Checkers and other website stuff

• Security

• WordPress Plugins

• The WordPress App

• <html> and .CSS

• Design Principles

What is WordPress?• WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like

to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

• Today the core software is built by hundreds of community volunteers, based upon the initial work from Matt Mullenweg in December 2003. The GNU General Public License (GPL) is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works.

• There are thousands of plugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine.

• Over 70 million people have chosen WordPress to power the place on the web they call “home”.

What is WordPress?

WordPress Theme Anatomy

WordPress Theme Anatomy…

The Loop

The System behind WP• The WordPress software is a CMS (Content Management System), personal

publishing system that uses both a PHP and MySQL platform, providing you with everything you need to create your blog, or website and publish your content dynamically without having to program the pages yourself. With this platform, your content is stored in a MySQL database in your hosting account.

• PHP (PHP Hypertext Preprocessor) is a server-side web scripting language for creating dynamic web pages. When a visitor opens a page built in PHP, the server processes the PHP commands and then renders the results to the visitor’s browser.

• MySQL is an open source relational database management system (RDBMS) that uses Structured Query Language (SQL), the most popular language for adding, accessing, and processing data in a database. MySQL is simply a big filing cabinet where all the content on your blog or website, is stored..

WordPress on the Server

Themes• If you’re using themes or plugins, use the WordPress.org theme and

plugin repository (http://wordpress.org/extend/themes and http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins, respectively). Each plugin and theme you find there has gone through a documented review process, which reduces the risk of downloading dangerous code.

• Theme files: Widgets and options you’ve set for your current theme are stored in the database; however, the physical theme template files, images, and stylesheets are not. They’re stored in the /wp-content/ themes folder. Connect to your web server via FTP and download that folder to your local computer.

• http://wordpress.org/themes/responsive

• http://techidate.com/free-wordpress-themes-2014-responsive/

• http://www.wordpressthemes2014.com/

• http://www.wpulti.com/best-free-wordpress-themes/

• http://wplava.com/best-free-wordpress-themes-january-2014/

• http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2014/02/the-best-free-wordpress-themes-february-2014/

Plugins• Plugins allow you to tailor WordPress to meet your site’s needs.

• “There’s a plugin for that.”

• Plugin files: Although all the plugin settings are stored in the database, the actual plugin files are not. The plugin files are located in the /wpcontent/ plugins folder. Connect to your web server via FTP and download that folder to your local computer.

• Plugins can be very simple — for instance, a plugin might change the appearance of the Dashboard menu. Or they can also be very complex, accomplishing hefty tasks such as providing a complete e-commerce solution with product listings, a shopping cart, and payment processing.

• Look at the version number of the plugin. If it shows Alpha or Beta, the plugin is being tested and may have bugs that could affect your site; you may want to wait until the plugin has been thoroughly tested and released as a full version. Generally, the higher the version number, the more mature (that is, tested and stable) the plugin is.

Recommended Plugins• Gallery: http://wordpress.org/plugins/nextgen-gallery/

• Redirection: http://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/

• Banner Slider: http://wordpress.org/plugins/jj-nextgen-jquery-slider/

• Shopping Cart: http://wordpress.org/support/plugin/woocommerce

• Contact Form: http://www.gravityforms.com/

• Editor: http://wordpress.org/plugins/tinymce-advanced/

• SEO: http://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/

• User Roles: http://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-access-manager/

• Calendar: http://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-event-calendar/

• Booking Calendar: http://wpbookingcalendar.com/

Running WP on your desktop• http://serverpress.com/downloads/

• Free test server program for Windows/Macs for developing WordPress.

• http://www.instantwp.com

• Instant WordPress is a free, standalone, portable WordPress development environment for Windows that will run from a USB key. It comes complete with a set of dummy WordPress posts and pages so that you do not have to create any data or posts to test themes and plugins.

• http://www.apachefriends.org/download.htmlXAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP, and Perl. Just download and start the installer.

Feeding your readers• RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. An RSS feed is a standard feature that

blog readers have come to expect. So what is RSS, really?

• RSS is written to the web server in XML (Extensible Markup Language) as a small, compact file that can be read by RSS readers.Think of an RSS feed as a syndicated, or distributable, auto-updating list of “What’s New” for your website.

• By using tools called feed readers, readers can download your feed automatically —that is, they can set their feed readers to automatically discover new content (such as posts and comments) from your blog and download that content for their consumption.

• For blog readers to stay up-to-date with the latest and greatest content you post, they need to subscribe to your RSS feed. WordPress allows RSS feeds to be autodiscovered by the various feed readers. The reader needs only to enter your site’s URL, and the program automatically finds your RSS feed.

Tracking back• Trackbacks are comments left on your blog by other blogs, not people.

• A trackback happens when you make a post on your blog, and within that post, you provide a link to a post made by another blogger on a different blog. When you publish that post, your blog sends a sort of electronic memo to the blog you linked to. That blog receives the memo and posts an acknowledgment of receipt in the form of a comment to the post that you linked to on their site. The information that is contained within the trackback includes a link back to the post on your site that contains the link to theirs — along with the date and time, as well as a short excerpt of your post.

• Trackbacks are displayed within the comments section of the individual posts. The memo is sent via a network ping (a tool used to test, or verify, whether a link is reachable across the Internet) from your site to the site you link to. This process works as long as both blogs support trackback protocol.

• Almost all major blogging platforms support the trackback protocol.

• Sending a trackback to a blog is a nice way of telling the blogger that you like the information she presented in her blog post. Every blogger appreciates trackbacks to their posts from other bloggers

Akismet• All WordPress systems have one important thing in common: Akismet, which kills

spam dead. Akismet is a WordPress plugin brought to you by Automattic, the maker of WordPress.com.

• The Akismet plugin has the sole purpose of protecting your blog from comment spam. Although other plugins address the issue of comment spam, the fact that Akismet is packaged with WordPress and works quite well means that most WordPress users rely on Akismet for their needs.

• Free for personal use blogs, but costs USD$5 p/m for commercial and professional sites (USD$59 p/a).

8 Essential WP Security Tips• Change Default "Wp_" Prefixes in your database

• Hide Login Error Messages

• Keep Wp-Admin Directory Protected

• Maintain Backups

• Prevent Directory Browsing

• Keep WordPress Core Files & Plugins Updated

• Pick A Strong Password

• Remove Admin User (use a different administrator name)

Upgrading your WordPress• The public schedule for WordPress updates is, roughly, one new release every 120

days. The WordPress development team is constantly striving to improve the user experience and bring exciting and fun new features to the WordPress platform. Each upgrade improves security and adds new features to enhance your (and your visitors’) experience on your website.

• Security: When WordPress versions come and go, outdated versions are no longer supported and are vulnerable to malicious attacks and hacker attempts.

• New features: Major WordPress releases, offer great new features that are fun to use, improve your experience, and boost your efficiency and productivity.

• Plugins and themes: Most plugin and theme developers work hard to make sure that their product is up-to-date with the latest version of WordPress. Generally, plugin and theme developers don’t worry about backwards compatibility, and they tend to ignore out-of-date versions of WordPress.

• Point release: Point releases usually only increase the numbered version by a decimal point or two, indicating a relatively minor release.

• Major release: A major release most often contains new features and jumps by a more seriously incremented version number. For example, WordPress going from 2.9.2 to 3.0

How to Install Google AnalyticsThere are several ways to install Google analytics in WordPress.

1. Direct paste it in your theme’s header.php right before the closing </head> tag.

2. Add to the functions.php

3. And by far the easiest, install a plugin. (Google Analyticator, Google Analytics for WordPress,… and more!)

• The Google Analytics for WordPress plugin allows you to track your websites or blog easily and with lots of metadata.

Using Google Tag ManagerGoogle Tag Manager lets you add or update your website tags and mobile applications,

easily and for free, whenever you want, without having to ask your website developer to add code changes in on each page each time.

Google Analytics Dashboards• Configure up to 10 ‘widgets’ to build your own Dashboard.

• Create custom Dashboards for different team members in the business

• Complete range of options, table and graph types, and parameters to choose from in customising.

Powerful In-Page Analytics

Google Publisher Plugin

• While it seems like Google is planning to add more functionality to the plug-in over time, the current version is still pretty limited. Besides the Webmaster Tools verification (which saves you the usual steps of copying and pasting code snippets into your WordPress templates), it only offers the ability to easily place ads on your site.

• To get started with this tool, all users have to open the plug-in and then select if they want to see a preview of their site’s homepage, or of a single page or post. Google automatically places markers on the screen for spots where ads would fit, and all a user has to do is select one of these spots to start service ads there.

• The service currently supports four ad formats: automatic (which chooses the most appropriate size), horizontal banner (728×90), vertical banner (160×600) and rectangle (300×250).

Apps Access Anywhere Anytime

• Check out the free WordPress app on your favourite tablet or smartphone

• Access the posts, pages, comments, and stats for your site so you can update whilst on the move.

HootSuite

• Did you know you can use HootSuite with WordPress to schedule content posts, reblog noteworthy posts and create a stream to monitor blogs you are following.

Domain Names

• http://www.auda.org.au/industry-information/registrars/

• Do a WHOIS to find if your domain name choice is available.

• Use a Registrar to register your domain name.

Speed Testing

• http://www.webpagetest.org

• Run a free performance review of your site/page to determine which areas can be improved for the user experience.

• Google Page Speed Testhttps://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights

Website Code Validation

• http://validator.w3.org/

• http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/

• Run a free website code markup validation check to review your site/page to determine if there are any coding <html> that can be improved to ensure different browsers break your website when rendering or impact Search Engines.

Link Checkers

• http://validator.w3.org/checklink

• http://xenus-link-sleuth.en.softonic.com/

• Review your website for any broken links to correct these, or update redirects to point to the final destination.

Browser Compatibility

• http://browsershots.org/

• Review your website to see how it renders on different Operating Systems and different browser versions.

Tablets and SmartPhones

• http://ipadpeek.com/

• Responsive design vs scaled design – review your site on different devices.

Learning <html> and .css

• http://www.w3schools.com/

• https://www.udemy.com/

• If you stray from the WYSIWYG editor, you start to enter into the world of website markup language <html> and .css. If you are interested in learning look online.

Colour Choices

Stock Images

• http://www.istockphoto.com/

• http://www.bigfoto.com/

• http://stockfresh.com/

Fonts• Psychology behind font type choices.

User Research Feedback

• http://www.usertesting.com/

• Cost: from USD$49. You can get feedback from your target audience about what frustrates them about your site (or a section of your site) and how they expect it to work.

• https://www.surveymonkey.com/

• https://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/home

Follow-up Questions?After today’s session, you are welcome to tweet questions

to our Vorian Agency Twitter Account @vorianagencyusing the hashtag #voriantraining

https://twitter.com/vorianagency

Keep Connected

After today’s session, I encourage you to explore WordPressfurther for your business. Please feel free to connect with me if you have additional questions:

LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/in/mattlynchseo

Don’t forget to follow Vorian Agency on LinkedIn:

http://www.linkedin.com/company/vorian-agency

All of my other Social Media links are available on About.Me:

About.Me: http://about.me/au.mattlynch

Email: [email protected]

Please… invite othersWe would like to thank you for your attendance

to today’s seminar on WordPress.

• A link to the Presentation Slide Notes and Video will be emailed to you

• Vorian Agency info packs are provided to showcase our eight key areas

• Vorian staff are available to arrange an appointment to assist your specific needs

• Please provide your feedback and hand-in the supplied questionnaire

• Please invite others you may know to register for our free seminar series and forward them a copy of today’s seminar email.