WordPress 4.0 Updates
- Media Management – can easily manage pictures, etc
- Embedding Content – YouTube videos. If you put the YouTube link in a post on it’s own line WP will automatically embed it for you.
- Live Widget and Appearance Previews – can preview them beforehand without having to make them live first.
WordPress Resources
- WP4LIB – http://wp4lib.bluwiki.com/
- WordPress Codex (WP, Lessons, esp) – http://codex.wordpress.org/
- Learning from Libraries that Use WordPress (print book)
Good sites from KLOW:
- www.rollalibrary.org
- http://www.cclibraryks.org/
- http://basehorlibrary.org/ – heavily customized
- Northwest Kansas Library System
- Bonner Springs City Library
- Eudora Public Library – paid custom theme. Looks good, but hard to change. Should always be easy to edit.
Make a static front page with your contact info, etc.
Pages vs Posts
Pages
- What to use them for
- How to organize them
- and set them up as menu items
Post Best Practices
If not posting often change the main page to be a static page and make blog posts be a menu item. If libraries can’t post more than once a month, make main page static. Whatever you do… make it regular. Make a regular schedule.
Security:
The worst thing you can do with WordPress security wise is to not update! So update regularly…
Old themes and plugins are also an issue. Take a quick glance at updates and the number of themes and plugins are in there. Get rid of themes and plugins that you aren’t using.
Most compromised passwords are actually words. Real words are bad passwords.
Plugins:
- Akismet – spam fighter plug-in. Can use the personal version of akismet.
- cforms (Ninja Forms?)
- Events Manager
- WordPress Editorial Calendar (cron issues…) Great way to manage posts and schedule post.
- Google Analyticator
- Jetpack – has some issues sometimes.
Disquis has a WordPress plugin
Picking Plugins:
- Compatible with current version, look at ratings, number of downloads, date last updated
- Clean up plugins regularly.
Themes:
- Genesis Framework w/ premium themes. Responsive, modern. Bonner Springs is using one and nekls is using one.
- mykansaslibrary.org theme repository. http://www.mykansaslibrary.org/myklow-faq/wordpress-klow-theme-repository/
- Your favorites?
Theme keywords to work for:
- Responsive
- bootstrap css (cascading style sheets) Bootstrap is a framework for css
- widgets, menus, sliders. Sliders are very popular
- theme options – look for widgets and custom menus
- Flat theme
Training on WordPress
WordPress Overview
- What can it do for your a library?
- What it can’t do for a library?
- Find out what the library’s goals for the site
- http://codex.wordpress.org/Getting_Started_with_WordPress
Settings and Users
- Setup a main user for the library, give admin rights
- delete or rename admin user
- permalinks?
- comment settings
- Blacklist comment with more than 2 links
- turn off comments on pages
Post and Pages
- Post publish page
- Screen options
- Categories
- Tags
- Editing pages/posts
Widgets and Sidebars
- Sidebars and how they work with themes
- Customizing sidebars with widgets
- Finding and editing widgets
- Widgets and plugins
Media
- Finding images (http://nekls.org/klow-websites-images)
- Adding images
- Featured images (sizes, etc)
- Editing Media
- Flip, scale, crop
Plugins and Themes
- Finding plugins
- Finding themes
- Installing and activiating plugins and themes
- Configuring plugins
- Customizing themes
First Steps
- Alter settings
- Choose a theme
- Add content (page, post, external content, widgets, etc)
- Find and install plugins
ytkits.mykansaslibrary.org – good example of static page
Buttons on Silver Lake Library
Janellegant's Blog 