wordpress in 1 hour - cumbriagrowthhub.co.uk · • wordpress plugins are bits of software that can...

Welcome to the webinar!

Webinar Host Paul Teague

Digital Development Manager Cumbria Chamber of Commerce

Wordpress in 1 Hour

• How to set up a Wordpress website (with no ads) for free • Hints, tips and strategies to make the most of your Wordpress site • Finding your way around a Wordpress site and the essential settings you

need to know

• These slides and the webinar replay video will be available within 3 hours of this live presentation

Coming Up …

Using Wordpress For Business

• Wordpress is what’s known as a CMS system ... which stands for ‘Content Management System’

• A CMS is a database driven system (usually) that doesn’t require any technical knowledge once it’s been installed

• CMS is very widely used these days and most people don’t use static websites any more

• Before Wordpress came along you were shackled to HTML, php, FTP and all the rest of those techie horrors

• Whenever you wanted to make a change to your website, you had to pay your webmaster lots of money to do it

• You would never have dared to change even an image on a static website let alone the entire design!

Why Wordpress?


• Wordpress is easy to install and simple to maintain • Once installed, updates and complete overhauls take minutes • It’s a WYSIWYG interface and no technical skills are needed (if you can use

eBay and Facebook, you can use Wordpress!) • It’s used by 74 million+ other people! • It has an extensive range of supporting plug-ins – many of them free –

which allow your to do virtually anything that you can imagine ... and then a bit more

• You can add multimedia to Wordpress and it integrates seamlessly with popular social media services like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and affiliate programs like Adsense, Amazon and Clickbank

Why Wordpress?


Notable Wordpress Users

Source: https://wordpress.com/notable-users/

https://wordpress.com/notable-users/





Wordpress Options

• There are two versions of Wordpress and it’s important that you use the right one!

• http://wordpress.com/ is a hosted version of the software ie you don’t have to install it

• http://wordpress.org/ is the self-installed version of the software and it’s the option that you should use

http://wordpress.com/

http://wordpress.org/


http://wordpress.com/ is free, very popular and extremely impressive but if you’re serious about blogging long term you’ll find it restrictive quite soon and it’s not best for SEO * Don’t worry if you use this, you can easily export your work and import it to Wordpress.org

http://wordpress.com/


http://wordpress.org/ is free and quite amazing. Since it moved into version 2 – in my opinion – it’s had no competitors ... it is quite simply the way you should now make your websites* * My personal opinion. Detractors will warn you of security problems. I’ll show you ways around that

http://wordpress.org/


Registering Your Free Hostinger Account Step 1: Go to http://hostinger.co.uk Step 2: Click on Create Account in the top, right hand corner of the site.

http://stuffmadesimple.net/hostinger


Register for a paid Siteground account Go to http://paulteague.com/siteground I use 2 x GoGeek accounts You need a StartUp account You get your domain name free for one year when you sign up for StartUp hosting

http://paulteague.com/siteground


• WordPress plugins are bits of software that can be uploaded to extend and expand the functionality of your WordPress site.

• Note: One of the primary advantages of using the self-hosted version of WordPress from WordPress.org is the ability to upload and use plugins on your WordPress site.

• Plugins can be free or paid. There are many excellent free plugins which do all sorts of amazing things – SEO, social media buttons and so on. You definitely do not need to pay to get great plugins

• Plugins are the ‘game changer’ with Wordpress – they allow you to do amazing things in your site – for free – and without the need to get coders involved

Source: iThemes


Buying Wordpress Themes My favourite sources are: https://themeforest.net https://woocommerce.com/woothemes/ https://ithemes.com/ It’s best to pay for Wordpress themes as free themes often break and developers get fed up with them swiftly! The themes that I uses are OptimizePress, ThriveThemes & Divi

https://themeforest.net/

https://woocommerce.com/woothemes/

https://ithemes.com/


WordPress Widgets

• A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function.

• You can add these 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.


The WordPress Widget Area


The WordPress Menu Area


WordPress Widgets

• One of the many reasons that I love WP so much are the plug-ins

• You can literally think of anything you want to do on a blog and there’ll be a plug-in available to help you

• Many great plug-ins are free!

• Each plug-in function would cost you a lot of money to code if you wanted to add it to a regular/static web site

• The simple way to think of a plug-in is that it is something that does a job on your blog ie it captures email addresses, it shows your Twitter feed, it lets you put adverts on your blog etc

• A plug-in is just a bit of code in a .zip file (to compress the size) which you simply download from a website – upload to your blog – install on your blog ... it’s simple!


Jetpack is the ideal all-in-one free Wordpress plugin for beginners. There’s a lot of ‘stuff’ packed in there and it helps to make using Wordpress a little more straightforward. I don’t use it – it’s not something that more experienced users would feel the need to use.


Jetpack


Siteground

Step 1: You first need to add your domain to Siteground. To begin this process, head for your cpanel, and click on the Addon Domains area [1]


Siteground

Step 2: In this process, you ‘connect’ your domain name to your cpanel area. Note in [1] that you don’t use http or www … just enter the domain name. [2] & [3] are auto-filled, use the password generator [4] to create your password, then click [5] to add your domain – that’s it!


Siteground

Step 3: Access the Wordpress Installer [2]. Note also that your nameservers are very easy to find [1} if you ever need to transfer your domain name.


Siteground

Step 4: This process is almost exactly the same as it was for Hostinger. Make sure that you note down your username and password. Leave the In Directory are blank. Everything else you can change in the Wordpress admin area.

Using Wordpress For Business • These are free plug-ins that I use myself

• I would describe these as essential plug-ins on any blog

• It’s not a comprehensive list – and I’m saving some for the security section and the SEO part of the coaching

• They’re all exactly the same process: Plugins > Add New > Search Plugins > Install Now > Activate > Configure

WordPress Plugins

Using Wordpress For Business • Put simply, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is giving your

blog the best chance of showing up in the search engines (Google, Bing etc)

• Most people find it really hard to rank their static website in the search engines ... but Google loves quality blogs!

• These are simple, basic, effective strategies that cost nothing

Search Engine Optimisation


Tools to make SEO much simpler

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/

My comments: Tends to be most widely used, I’m not keen though, it’s over-complicated in my opinion.








https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

My comments: My favourite for Wordpress, I’ve used it for years.














https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/

My comments: My favourite, I’ve used it for years.









Tools to make security much simpler

• All websites have security and technical issues - even simple, static websites

• Wordpress is very vulnerable to malicious attack because of its popularity

• Make sure you use at least the simple security measures that I give you

• In context, my site has remained intact for 9 years ... so far

• I pay for Sucuri to monitor and protect my most important WP installations


Tools to make security much simpler

• Always update to the latest version of Wordpress

• Do not use the default 'admin' username

• Use a secure password (use a free service like LastPass to make it really secure!)

• Keep your themes and plugins updated


My comments: My favourite, I’ve used it for years. Can make your Wordpress site impregnanble if you want it to

Tools to make Wordpress security much simpler

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-wp-security-and-firewall/

















My comments: My favourite, I’ve used it for years.


https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/limit-login-attempts/










My comments: A great, effective and free anti-spam plugin

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/anti-spam/








My comments: You can use this plugin for free, you can also pay for the Sucuri service and they’ll sort out any security-related problems that you have. https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/sucuri-scanner/

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/sucuri-scanner/







General use Wordpress plugins

My comments: A really simple way of creating a ‘Contact Us’ form

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/si-contact-form/









General use Wordpress plugins

My comments: You might not need this, but if you’re putting any tracking codes on your website, under EU law, you should use this.

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/cookie-law-info/









Social Wordpress plugins

My comments: I like how it looks, it’s got a bit ‘commercial’ since I first started using it

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/shareaholic/






My comments: I use this on my podcast and I pay for it. It gives a very versatile social interface

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/social-warfare/








My comments: This is one of my favourites, I have used it for several years with no problems

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/aas-digg-digg-alternative/











Setting up your own Wordpress site

• You need to have a proper URL (ie http://myblog.com) as this is much better for SEO purposes

• Look for web hosting with cPanel with QuickInstall or Softaculous • You do not need to pay a lot of money for web hosting • I used Hostgator for many years, I started with their cheap

‘Hatchling’ plan, now I useSiteGround • Both are fine for new users • Go to http://paulteague.com/hostgator25 and enter the code

ChamberDiscount for 25% off or head for http://paulteague.com/siteground for a free domain name with your hosting [Affiliate links!]

http://myblog.com/

http://paulteague.com/hostgator25

http://paulteague.com/siteground


Buying a domain name

I recommend using SiteGround for your Wordpress hosting – they give you a free domain name with your 1st year’s hosting, so that will make life very easy for you! If you decide to buy your domain name elsewhere, I use https://www.fasthosts.co.uk/ and have done so since I purchased my very first domain name. Due to DNS propagation, it can take up to 12 hours before your new domain/subdomain will start working. Only contact your hosting service support desk if your site hasn’t appeared after 24 hours

https://www.fasthosts.co.uk/


QuickInstall

Softaculous

• These take all the geekiness out of a Wordpress installation

• They’re ‘on-click’ simple – you genuinely need no technical knowledge

• This is the biggest secret about Wordpress – you don’t need to pay somebody £££ to install it

• You also get support from your web hosting company


Your simple Wordpress, small business action plan

1) Think mobile in everything that you do online 2) Think social in everything that you do 3) Create great page content on your site 4) Label your images for SEO power 5) Use keywords for SEO power 6) Use a self-installed Wordpress site with your

own domain name – ditch Wix! 7) Keep your Wordpress site up-to-date 8) Keep listening and learning to develop your

Wordpress knowledge & skills

Using Wordpress For Business https://wordpress.org/support/ … the official

Wordpress support site. Please make this site your friend http://learn.wordpress.com/ … an amazing free site with step-by-step guidance. Well worth a look. http://en.forums.wordpress.com/forum/support ... Need help? Post a question on the official forum.

WordPress Help

https://wordpress.org/support/

http://learn.wordpress.com/

http://en.forums.wordpress.com/forum/support

http://en.forums.wordpress.com/forum/support

Access all of the slides from today [with EXTRA slides and

info], as well as lots of useful URLs and resources, via this

link: http://www.cumbriagrowthhub.co.uk/webinars/wordpress

Slides and the replay video will appear within 24 hours of the

end of the live webinar.

Next steps …

http://www.cumbriagrowthhub.co.uk/webinars/wordpress



wordpress in 1 hour - cumbriagrowthhub.co.uk · • wordpress plugins are bits of software that can...

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