Hey, welcome to this WordPress
for beginners course!
In this course, we're going to teach you
everything you need to know
about setting up and managing
your WordPress site.
But first, let's take a look at what
WordPress is and what it can do.
If you're watching this, you probably
already know a bit about WordPress,
but let's just start
with the absolute basics, to be sure.
WordPress is a CMS,
or content management system.
It allows you to build a website
and publish content that you want
to share with the world.
There are basically three things
that are central to what WordPress does.
First, there's an advanced text editor,
called the block editor,
that helps you write content for your post
and add all kinds of media,
like images and videos, to them.
Second, it offers ways to manage
and structure your content
so it's an actual website, and not just
a collection of posts and pages.
And, lastly, it has all kinds of options
to customize how your site works
and what it looks like.
Now, the really cool thing about WordPress
is that there are huge libraries
of ready-to-use templates and features
that people have created for you
to hand-pick and apply to your site.
Some are free, some are paid.
In any case, all of these resources
allow you to do a lot of things,
even if you don't know how to code.
By making smart use of these resources,
you can make your site
exactly what you want it to be.
Which makes WordPress
a very easy-to-use CMS.
And in this course, we're going to show you
exactly how to make maximum use
of its beginner-friendly nature.
Another great thing about WordPress
is that it's both free and open-source.
Open-source means that everyone can see
and contribute to the program code
that shapes WordPress.
This creates a very powerful ecosystem.
WordPress doesn't belong to anyone company.
It is freely editable by a bigger community
of people who build on what's already there,
improving WordPress one step at a time.
That's one of the reasons why there are
so many great extensions
to the core of what WordPress provides,
and why it's so versatile.
Now, let's get practical: what can you
actually do with WordPress?
What are your options?
Well, only almost everything!
As I've told you, one of the big powers
of WordPress
is that you can use it
to do all kinds of things.
Want to blog?
That's what it was made for.
Want an online shop? No problem,
just install an e-commerce plugin!
Want to set up a news site,
a membership site, a photography site?
I could go on, the options are countless.
Because it's so easy to customize,
WordPress is a very strong
and flexible foundation
that can house anything you want to build.
In the upcoming modules, we're going
to dissect this foundation completely,
so you'll be able to create your website
as you've always imagined it!
Hi! In the previous lesson,
we've discussed what WordPress is
and what you can do with it.
And, one of the things we talked about
was that WordPress is open source.
But what does that mean?
In this lesson, we'll explore
the definition of open source,
and we'll share why we at Yoast think
open source is so very awesome.
Okay, so, what is open source?
Open-source software is the software
that is developed within a community.
Everyone can use, alter, and distribute
the code of the software.
People are encouraged to participate in
and improve upon the software project.
There are a lot of examples
of open-source software.
The Mozilla Firefox internet browser...
that's open source.
And maybe you've heard about Linux?
As we've already discussed,
WordPress is an open-source CMS.
And of course, all of the Yoast plugins
are open source too.
Being open source is actually one
of the core values of our company.
But why do we love
open source so much?
Well, we basically love open source
for three reasons:
First of all, we believe that open source
is the best way
to get new innovations and new solutions
to the problems we face.
This comes down to:
two heads are just better than one.
The knowledge of two people
or more people combined
will always exceed
that of one person alone.
We believe that if you work together
on a solution,
this will lead to better solutions.
The second reason
why we love open source
is because it helps
avoid wasting talent and skills.
Lots of people around the world are working
on solving the same, or similar problems.
That's a waste of talent and skills.
We shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel
over and over again.
With open-source, we share our knowledge
about the invention of the wheel.
We make other people benefit
from our wheel.
And we let other people
improve upon that wheel.
The third reason why we love open source
is because open source is inclusive.
Open-source projects like WordPress
invite everyone to participate.
Really everyone.
If you want to contribute
to WordPress, you can.
It doesn't matter what you want to do,
where you live,
how much money you have,
or what you look like.
Everyone has their own talents,
and your talents will be recognized
in an open-source community.
Whether you have programming skills,
you love translating,
you have superb organizational skills,
or a great sense of community -
everyone can contribute!
At Yoast, we really believe
in open source.
Just like WordPress,
our source code is open,
and other people actively contribute
to making it better.
And we contribute to other
open-source projects, like WordPress Core.
The developers at Yoast
learn from each other,
but they also learn
from all the other developers
who are active in the WordPress project.
Sparked your interest?
In Module 8 of this course,
which is optional,
we'll discuss more about
the story behind WordPress.
How did WordPress start?
What's the WordPress community like?
And how can you contribute?
We'll tell you all about it!
But first, we'll dive into how you can use
WordPress to create your own site!
In the previous video, we saw
what you can do with WordPress.
What we haven't talked about yet,
is that there are two different
versions of WordPress:
WordPress.com and WordPress.org.
In this lesson, we'll dive into the differences
between these two
and we'll discuss their pros and cons.
The main difference between
WordPress.com and WordPress.org
is who's hosting your site.
WordPress.com takes care
of all the hosting for you,
while with WordPress.org, you take care
of where you host your own website.
This means that if you use WordPress.org,
you have to pay for your web hosting
and domain registration,
while WordPress.com is free
for up to 3 gigabytes of storage space.
However, if you use WordPress.com,
you will have ads on your site
and you can only have a custom domain
on a premium plan.
Your domain will be limited to one
of the available subdomains
like .home.blog or .wordpress.com,
like in this example.
There are paid plans available, however.
They allow you to pick premium plans
which remove ads
and allow you to choose
your own domain, for example.
This also means that if you use
WordPress.org,
you own your website and data,
whereas
if you use WordPress.com, you don't fully.
If you want and need absolute freedom
then go for WordPress.org.
If monetizing your site is important to you,
the better option here is WordPress.org.
The free version of WordPress.com
doesn't allow you to sell ads on your site.
If you want to advertise, you need to get
a Premium or Business plan.
Even with these plans,
you'll share a part of your revenue
with WordPress.com, though,
through a platform called WordAds.
On the other hand, monetization is free
if you use WordPress.org.
What some people see as a con
of WordPress.org, however,
is that you have to do
all the maintenance yourself.
You have to take care of updates,
backups, and security yourself.
But that also means
you have the freedom to choose
how often you want
to do backups and updates,
and what kind of security measures
you want to take.
You don't have to worry about this
if you use WordPress.com,
this is all automatically taken care of.
Okay, this may be a lot to take in.
Let's try to make this
a bit easier to understand.
You could see using WordPress.com
as renting a house:
you have limited power and control
over what you can and cannot do.
However, maintenance of the house
is taken care of for you.
On the other hand, WordPress.org
is like owning a house.
You have full control and you can do
anything you want with it,
but you also have to maintain
the house yourself.
So, if you want to get
the most out of your website,
but also don't mind
getting your hands dirty,
we'd recommend using WordPress.org.
This option has
much better customization options,
and you can install any theme, plugin,
and do just about anything with your site.
The rest of this course will, therefore, focus
on how to use WordPress.org.
Don't worry, we'll talk you through every step
of setting up a WordPress website.
We promise: everyone can do this.
After this course, you'll know how to make
an awesome, WordPress-based site!
In the next lesson, we'll introduce
all of the topics you're going to learn
about in this course,
and we'll introduce the example case
that's going to help you understand
everything even better!
In the previous videos in this module,
we've discussed what WordPress is
what it can do for you
and what the difference is between
WordPress.com and WordPress.org.
We've also explained why this course
focuses on learning to use WordPress.org.
In this lesson, we'll explore the topics
that we'll discuss during the course,
so you know what you can expect.
Furthermore, we'll introduce
our own example website,
that we're going to build
from the ground up
and use to illustrate how setting up
a WordPress site works in practice.
Let's first explore
the contents of this course.
The WordPress for beginners course
consists of seven modules.
The first module is the current module,
'Introduction to WordPress'.
Well, you already know
what we've discussed in this module.
The next module is called
'Getting started with WordPress'.
In this module, we'll explain how you can
get your WordPress site up and running,
by getting a domain,
hosting and a WordPress install.
We'll then explore
the WordPress back end,
and we'll talk about the different ways
you could use WordPress.
In the third module,
'Customizing your site',
we'll explain how you can
customize your site.
We'll discuss themes, plugins,
widgets, and the WordPress customizer.
We'll also explore
the different WordPress settings
you can use to customize
how your site functions.
In the fourth module,
'Creating content in the block editor',
we'll start by explaining
what posts and pages are.
Then, we'll show you
how to write a post or page,
how to add photos and videos
to those posts or pages,
and how to use the different kinds of blocks
the WordPress block editor offers.
The fifth module is called
'Structuring your site',
and - surprise! - this module is
all about structuring your site.
Here, we'll discuss how you should organize
your posts and pages,
using categories, tags, and more.
Then, in the sixth module,
called 'Managing your WordPress site',
we'll talk about having multiple users
on your WordPress site.
Moreover, we'll explain why doing updates
and backups is so important
and we'll show you how to go about this.
We'll also go into some common mistakes
and how you can prevent those.
Then, we'll dive into WordPress security.
Finally, the seventh module
is called 'WordPress SEO'.
At Yoast, we believe SEO is a core aspect
of website optimization.
If you create a website, you want people
to be able to find you, right?
So, in this module, we'll go into the things
WordPress does for your SEO,
we'll go into how the Yoast SEO plugin
can help you
with the SEO for your WordPress site,
and we'll talk about
what *you* should do yourself,
to make sure people can find
your site in the search results.
So, you know what's coming.
Now, let's introduce the example site
we'll use throughout this course:
everydayimtravelling.com.
To really get what this site is about, let's
look at the five authors that set up the site.
Meet Nora, Taylor, Benjamin,
Arya and Daniel.
They're a group of twenty-something friends,
whose paths crossed in Asia
as they were all traveling the world
independently from each other.
In some late-night conversations
at the hostel they were staying in,
they noticed that together
they had already visited
all of the world's continents
and dozens of countries.
Right there and then, they decided
to create their own travel blog.
Through this blog, they want to share
their travel experiences with the world,
and report on travel trends,
tips, and much more.
They've read about WordPress
and what it can do for them,
and they've decided to create
a WordPress-based site.
In the rest of this course, we'll explain
how you can create a WordPress website,
how you can customize it,
organize it, and much more.
And because our travel bloggers are facing
many of the same challenges you are,
we'll illustrate all of this
with everydayimtravelling.com,
so you'll see exactly
how to go about this!
That's it for this lesson.
On to the next module, where you'll learn
how to get started with WordPress!
As you've seen in the last video
of the previous module,
we've decided to set up
a WordPress.org site.
This means you're going to have
to get hosting and a domain name.
Now, the tricky thing with this topic is that
the way you get WordPress up and running
depends on the way your hosting company
has set this up.
So we can't show you
a one-size-fits all tutorial video,
your hosting company should have
instructions ready though
so it shouldn't be too difficult of a task
to get your website up and running.
What we can and will do however is discuss
a number of things you should consider
when going through the process
of selecting hosting and a domain name
and installing WordPress.
First of all, you'll have to decide
what hosting company, and what plan,
suits your needs.
We believe that investing in good hosting
is always the way to go.
You don't want to share servers
with lots of other websites, for example,
because that slows down your site.
Saving a few bucks on hosting
just isn't worth it in the end.
In the reading materials,
we'll go into everything you should consider
when picking a host in more detail.
Then there's the issue of picking
your domain name.
Domain names are a very important part
of building a brand,
and thus require some thinking.
You want people to be able to recognize you
and find you if they're looking for you.
That's why it's often a good idea to have
a short domain name that is easy to type.
If it's catchy,
that helps as well, of course.
Take our example site domain:
everydayimtravelling.com.
To be honest, it's not the first domain name
I would choose, because it's quite difficult.
And long.
Still, it's catchy and has a ring to it.
So I still like it as an example site.
But ideally, you'd like a shorter
domain name that's easier to spell.
If you have a company, you'll probably want
your company name as a domain name.
It's also very important to consider
what TLD you choose.
A TLD is the last bit of your homepage URL,
so for example .com or .gov or .org.
Of course, .com
is the most recognizable TLD
and if you're going to operate internationally,
it's really the only way to go.
But good luck trying to find a good .com
domain name that isn't already taken
(that's one of the reasons we went
for everydayimtravelling.com, actually).
Now if your audience exclusively consists
of people within a specific country,
a country TLD could be good as well,
like .nl for the Netherlands.
We'll go into TLDs
a bit more in the reading materials.
So let's say you've picked a host
and a domain name you like,
what does the process
usually look like after that?
Well, there's different ways
to go about this.
For one, it's often cheaper to register
a domain name and hosting separately.
There are numerous sites that allow you
to register a domain name, but look out!
Prices vary a lot, so make sure you do
proper research and compare prices.
If you don't think a couple of bucks
are worth the hassle,
you can get your domain name
and hosting all at once as well.
Now, when you get hosting,
it really helps to check
whether your hosting company
makes it easy for you to set up WordPress.
Again, we'll review
some of the choices you have to make
when selecting a host
in more detail in the reading materials.
Most dedicated WordPress hosting parties
make it very easy for you to set up WordPress.
You simply visit their site, pick a plan,
follow the instructions
and poof, you have
a working WordPress installation.
We've listed some suitable hosts
that make installing WordPress
easy for you in the reading materials.
Once you've selected a plan, most hosts
will ask you to choose a domain name
or fill in the domain name
you already have.
Then it's just a matter
of filling in your details
and you've got your domain
and hosting covered.
Which leaves setting up your site.
As I've said before, this really depends
on how the hosting company has set this up.
But let's just focus on a few things
you should definitely pay attention to.
What's very important is that you set up
your admin account properly.
Never use "admin" as the username.
Pick your own custom username
and pick a strong password,
preferably one that you save
in a password manager.
Secondly, let's talk security.
Always make sure your website
is on HTTPS.
Now we'll not go into the details too much,
because it gets technical really quickly
but suffice it to say that HTTPS
is an encrypted, safer way
of sending data than HTTP.
And this makes your site more secure,
and the SSL certificates required for this
are often included in your hosting plan.
Some hosting parties will even set it up
automatically for you,
so it's probably wise to pick one that does.
If you don't, make sure you put in the effort
to configure it when setting up your site.
How exactly you do this, again,
depends on your hosting company.
So they should have
the proper tutorials to help you.
And if not, you'll always be able
to contact them for support.
Lastly, I'd like to note that,
once you've completed the installation,
your site is always available
to you in your browser
by navigating
to your domain name /wp-admin,
so for example:
everydayimtravelling.com/wp-admin.
You can log in
with your username and password.
Which means we're ready to start exploring
Wordpress itself now in the next video.
Hi, so now you know which things you should
take into account when selecting a host.
Now let’s see how things
actually work in practice.
We can’t cover it all, because things work
just a little differently
for each hosting company.
In this screencast, we’ll show you
how it works for SiteGround.
Not because we think this is “the best”
hosting company or the biggest or the cheapest.
We do think it’s a good host,
but it sure is not the only one.
In fact, we’ve created a list for you
on yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/
and this list contains only reliable
and dedicated WordPress hosts.
This list could be a good
starting point
when you’re trying to find a host
that fits your specific needs.
Anyway, we chose SiteGround for this video,
because it’s on this list
and we have experience
with this host ourselves.
And therefore, we could show you
more details of the practical process.
Now, let’s get started
with that practical part.
Let’s click this link to get some more
information on our example host SiteGround.
Here you can see some features.
It comes with free SSL,
we’ve talked about this before,
it makes your site more secure.
So, that’s included.
A CDN is also very useful, it can improve
the loading speed of your site.
We’ll come back to that in a later module
about WordPress SEO.
Next, you can see the PHP versions
SiteGround supports.
PHP is important for your site speed as well
- and for security too.
PHP is the programming language
that’s used to build and maintain WordPress.
WordPress itself encourages updating
to its recommended version,
which is PHP 7.3 right now,
which is the latest version.
So, we’re good, because 7.3
is the default version for this host.
Now, there is more to read on this page about
the admin interface,
support-related things
and the locations of the server.
And how this host gives back
to the community.
Let’s assume that we’ve read all of this,
it feels right
and you want to know what plans
this host offers.
Let’s click this link to visit the actual site
of SiteGround and find out more.
Ah, WordPress hosting,
yes, that’s what I’m looking for.
Let’s click it.
“Officially recommended by WordPress.org.”
That’s always good.
Now, it seems
that they offer three different plans:
StartUp, GrowBig, and GoGeek.
Of course, each plan has
a different price tag.
Questions you have to ask yourself:
How many websites do I have?
How many web space do I need?
How many visitors do I expect?
Let’s say the StartUp plan
fits my needs best.
Take a look at the extra features over here:
Free WP install -
okay, so the installation
of WordPress is taken care of.
Free WP migrator - okay, if I already have
a site and I want to migrate it to this host,
then my host will take care of it.
Free SSL and HTTPS, there it is again.
Free email, free CDN, free daily
backups and of course a lot more.
Let’s scroll down a bit
to see what’s there.
On the left, more information about
launching a new WordPress website.
“We save you the trouble of downloading,
installing, and configuring WordPress manually
by offering a simple
click-and-install option.”
That’s nice.
“No technical knowledge required!” Great!
On the right, you can learn more about how
to transfer - or migrate -
an existing site
from another host to this host.
Over here, you can find more information about
security & updates, and performance.
Now, let’s say I’ve done my research
and I’ve made up my mind.
It’s going to be the StartUp plan for me.
So, get me that plan.
As you can see, I’ve selected my plan
and step 2 is to choose a domain name.
If you want to register your domain here,
for this price,
then enter your domain name here
and select your TLD.
As we’ve said before,
you don’t have to register your domain with
your hosting account if you don’t want to.
You can register your domain elsewhere too.
Or maybe you already have an existing site
with a registered domain name.
In both cases, you can click the other option,
enter your domain name, and then proceed.
In my case, let’s say I want to register
a new domain.
Let’s enter the details one more time...
and click proceed.
Ah, and it’s still available.
That’s, of course, not always the case.
For example, let’s enter
yoast.com to see what happens.
This domain is already taken.
So, let’s stick to everydayimtravelling.com.
Step 3 is review & complete.
Fill in your details, check your order,
which is, in this case, a StartUp plan
for 12 months and domain registration.
And then pay.
Done.
What happens next, again, depends
on the hosting company you’ve chosen.
Maybe you’re redirected
to your hosting account directly.
Or maybe you’ll receive an email
with instructions to log in somewhere.
In the next video, we’ll show you
how it works for SiteGround.
After we've purchased the SiteGround plan
we are redirected to the SiteGround
dashboard at my.siteground.com.
Here we will see various options
having to do with our account.
As you can see as I'm scrolling down.
We're going to focus
on the most important thing right now
and that is to connect our domain
to an actual installation.
So I'm going to go ahead
and click on websites.
And in the following screen you can see
that there currently is not a website
in our account.
So the logical step is to add a website.
So I'm going to click here at the bottom
where it says, 'create website'.
Now the moment that I do this
I am prompted with the next option
and that is to choose the domain
and that can be a new domain,
an existing domain or a temporary domain,
but since we have already
purchased our domain,
we're going to click on 'existing domain'
and select that one.
You can see from the moment that
I've clicked on 'existing domain'
we have the option to enter
our domain name here at the bottom.
So everydayimtravelling is the domain
we said we're going to use.
So as we click on continue
we're going to see
that indeed the domain we wish to use
is not registered at our SiteGround account.
So we have to make sure that in order
to have access to this domain
we will need to update its DNS settings
after we've created the site.
We're going to pretend
that this has already been done
and we're going to click 'continue' anyway.
Now the next step is where we can actually
start creating a new website,
so 'start a new website'
is what we're going to select here.
And as I click 'select',
I am prompted
with a bunch of applications to choose from.
Obviously we're going to select
the very first one, the WordPress application,
so we select that one and we are immediately
prompted with an extra input field
to set up my WordPress login.
Once I've entered both
my email address and password,
the one I want to use for the administrator
account for my WordPress site
I will click 'continue'.
And the last step of the adding a new
website wizard presents me with the option
to also install or activate a SiteGround
site scanner on my account.
We're going to ignore that for now
and just click 'finish'.
The next step is all happening
behind the screens
and SiteGround is actually creating
a fully installed WordPress installation for us.
Once the SiteGround site installer has finished
we can click on websites menu tab again
and then we can see here that
everydayimtravelling.com
is indeed connected to our hosting account.
It displays the WordPress logo
so that means we have
a WordPress installation ready
at everydayimtravelling.com.
So the next thing we're going to do is
click on the button here at the right
where it says WordPress kit.
Once I click that I am presented
with a bunch of tools that we can use.
Our first job is to jump
into the WordPress admin itself
so that's what we are going to do.
We're going to enter our login credentials
that we've created in an earlier step.
From the moment we have started
the login process
we are taken to a next wizard
and that wizard is called
the WordPress starter
and it will guide us through a few steps
to welcome us to our WordPress website.
So we're just going to click 'start now'
at the bottom
and we can choose
different types of themes.
We're not going to do that.
We're going to stay with the default,
in this case Twenty Seventeen theme,
and the next step is us...
clicking on continue at the very bottom.
Once I click 'continue'
I'm presented with a few other options;
I can select the contact form,
I can select a shop plugin if I needed
or a few other ones.
I'm going to ignore what the other options
are here and basically just hit 'continue'
and only select the contact form
as you can see.
And the next step is probably
the most important one
because here you have the option
to optimize for SEO.
So we're going to select that one,
we're going to hit complete
and the installation is now in progress.
Meaning that our WordPress installation
is going to be prepared
by the options we have selected
in the past three steps.
It's installing the theme,
it's importing some sample data...
and congratulations -
our site is ready.
So we have successfully completed
the installation of everything
that we had selected
and the next step we're going to do
is go to our dashboard.
Now this isn't the default dashboard,
this is a specialized dashboard
created by SiteGround,
so your actual dashboard
will look different.
I'm just going to scroll down
and see what's here
and I'm going to check
one specific menu item here
where it says 'SG Optimizer',
which stands for SiteGround Optimizer.
We're going to click on that and see
what type of options we have here.
Now the most important one for now
is the environment optimization
because we do want
to make use of HTTPS.
That is a more secure way
of serving your website to visitors.
This will force HTTPS,
that is exactly what we want.
So we're going to hit 'confirm'...
and now HTTPS is available.
Next step is go back to the dashboard.
And for that
we need to login once more...
And now we're done.
Now that you have installed WordPress,
in this video I will show you
how to navigate the WordPress back end.
The back end is your control room.
From here, you can share
the magic you create with the world.
Or put less poetically,
from the back end you can add, edit and
remove the content on your website
as well as control
what your site looks like.
One thing to note before we start exploring
the WordPress back end
is that depending on your host,
a couple of things may look slightly
different in your WordPress installation.
For example, your host may add different
sample pages
from the standard WordPress ones,
or install some plugins by default.
We're working with a clean local install
that is a completely basic setup.
As you can already see on this screen
there is a lot you can do.
In this video, I will briefly show you
the options in the Toolbar and the Dashboard.
In the next video, we will also see
the options in the Admin menu.
We will go into much more detail
on all of the options you see here
in the other videos of this course.
So, let's begin.
At the top of the screen,
you can see the toolbar.
This is your administrator toolbar,
and it does not appear
to people visiting your website.
The first icon you see in the toolbar
is the WordPress logo.
From here, you can easily access
WordPress-related sites and documents.
Furthermore, by clicking
on the name of your page,
you will be taken to a screen
that shows your homepage.
This is what your visitors see
when they go to your site.
You could use this option to see what any
changes you've made actually look like.
Now let's go back to the toolbar, and see
the next option
which allows you quick access
to the comments screen.
Finally, the toolbar menu Item
titled "New"
allows you to quickly write new posts,
upload new media,
write pages and add new users.
On the right side of the toolbar
you can edit your profile and log out.
By clicking your login name
or "Edit my profile"
you will access the profile screen.
Here you can add some personal information,
such as your name and contact info.
And most importantly,
at the bottom of the screen
is where you can change your password.
Now that we've seen the toolbar,
let's go to the more exciting part:
the dashboard.
When you first logged in with WordPress,
you probably saw the welcome message.
This message is within a box that
we call a dashboard widget.
When you are new to WordPress
everything may seem intimidating.
So the WordPress developers created this
widget with the intention to guide you
through the most important first steps
you can take in creating your site.
Below, you can see that there are
a few other widgets as well.
Now, the widgets that you see on
your dashboard are just the default ones.
When you install plugins,
other widgets may show up here as well,
and that will allow you to manage
your site in various ways.
But let's quickly see what each
of these default widgets provides.
The "At a glance" widget shows you
what the current number of your posts,
comments and pages is.
It also shows you what version
of WordPress you are currently using,
as well as the theme
that you have activated.
You can see that the options for posts,
comments and pages are blue.
That means that you can click on them, and
be taken to their respective editing screens.
For a more detailed preview of your posts
and comments, there is the activity widget.
First, you can see the most recent
published posts, and their titles.
Click on them, and you will be taken
to the post editing screen,
where you can make changes
if necessary.
Below the recently published posts
are the recent comments.
The recent comments section in this widget
allows you more than meets the eye.
From here, you can see who commented,
and access their profile,
as well as view the comment,
and the post it relates to.
As you may be aware, comments
sometimes need managing,
and there are plenty of options
for that here.
For example, you can choose
to unapprove, quickly reply, edit,
mark as spam, delete
or view a comment.
Lastly, this widget gives you
an overview
and quick access
to all the comments on your website.
Moving on to the quick drafts widget.
If you have a new post idea,
and you want to jot it down quickly,
you can do it
via the "Quick Draft" widget.
All you need to do is enter a title,
write a piece of text and click save.
As the title suggests, this is just a draft,
and it will not be published on your site.
Clicking on the link of the draft,
will take you to the post screen,
where you can edit the draft
and write a longer,
complete version of your idea.
Finally, in the "WordPress News
and Events"
you are offered a quick glimpse
into the WordPress world.
By clicking on the links to Meetups,
WordCamps and news
you can learn more about these topics.
The widgets that we talked about
are not static, or set in stone.
You can easily move, close, open
or delete them from your dashboard.
If you hover over the top of one of the widgets
you can see a cross arrow appear.
By clicking and holding your left mouse
button and dragging the arrow,
you can move these widgets around.
You are free to arrange
the widgets as you wish.
If some of them are not useful to you,
you can also choose to close them.
Every widget, has an arrow pointing
upwards in the upper right corner.
By clicking on the arrow,
you will see the widget close, or collapse.
The arrow is now pointing downwards.
If you want to open the widget again,
simply click on the downward
pointing arrow.
If you want to get rid
of a widget completely,
you can do that via the Screen Options.
The Screen Options tab is located
in the upper right corner
below the administrator tab.
Click on it, and you will see a menu
that contains the widgets we discussed,
with ticked boxes next to them.
If you untick a box of a respective widget,
it will no longer be on your dashboard.
If you want to put it back,
just tick the box again.
That is your dashboard
and all you can do in it.
In the next video, we will explore some
more ways you can work with your site
through the Admin menu.
Hi, welcome back.
In the previous video we saw the options
there are in the Administrator toolbar
and in the Dashboard
in your WordPress back end.
In this video,
we will explore the Admin menu.
Well, first things first,
where can you find the Admin menu?
Well, at the far left of your screen.
You can either hover over the menu item,
to see the tabs,
and then click on the one you need.
Or you can click on a menu item itself,
and then click the tab you want to go to.
Let’s now go into the menu items
one by one and see the options they have.
At the top of the admin menu is the dashboard,
which we already discussed.
By clicking the dashboard menu item,
you can also see the Updates tab.
The Updates tab gives you access to the updates
screen from where you can get information
on which version of WordPress
you are using,
and if your plugins and themes
are all up-to-date.
You can also take actions and manually check
for updates, as well as re-install updates.
Let’s move on to one of the most important
menu item of the admin menu: Posts.
This is the command center for writing,
and managing your posts.
You will probably spend a lot of time here
working on your content
and perfecting your posts.
And, of course, we will tell you all about
how to write a post in a later video.
Now, let’s preview
what exactly you can do here.
Click on the Posts menu item,
and you will see the posts screen open,
under the All Posts tab.
The most important is
the Add New button and the Add New tab.
Both give you access to the same screen, where
you can add brilliant texts, beautiful images,
and other media.
If you go back, you will see
the other options that you have.
The posts screen shows you
all the posts you have created so far.
You can see who created them, the categories
and tags that they were assigned,
the number of comments
and the date of publishing.
You can hover over the title of a post
to reveal more editing and managing options.
Once you have a lot of posts, it will be
difficult to navigate all of them from a list.
That’s why, you can filter your posts by date
or by category when searching for them.
You can also take actions such as deleting
and editing more posts at once.
And you can also search your posts
via the Search Posts button.
As you can see the Post menu item
also contains the tabs Categories and Tags.
Let’s keep it simple for now, because there’s
a whole video about categories and tags
waiting for you in a later module.
For now, it is enough to know that Categories
allow you to classify your posts
into groups or subgroups.
And this makes it easier for visitors
to navigate your site.
If you click on the Categories tab
in the admin menu,
you will see a screen where you can add,
edit, assign and delete categories.
Besides Categories,
you can also add Tags to your texts.
As you can see, this screen is very similar.
Just like categories, tags can help
your visitors navigate your site.
Now, let’s explore the Media menu item,
which allows you to manage your media.
Media can be anything:
photos, videos, audio.
Usually, you add your media
when preparing your post
and while working in the posts screen.
We will show you this
in a later video as well.
But here, you can view, edit and delete media
that you have already uploaded.
To navigate the library with more ease, you
can search for media items in the search box.
You can also search, or sort,
based on the type of item, or the date.
You can upload new media files
by clicking the button Add New
- or by clicking the tab overhere.
Now, let’s see what’s below
the Media menu item.
This item is called Pages.
What’s the difference
between a post and a page?
Do you know?
It’s vital information, so we’ll explain
the difference in a separate video later on.
However, the All Pages tab - which takes you
to the overview of all your pages -
is very similar to the All Posts tab.
And the same goes for the Add New tab,
where you can create new pages.
Moving on.
Next in the admin menu is the Comments menu
item that takes you to the Comments screen.
Here you can see and access the comments
that your readers leave on your posts.
From here you can also approve comments
(or unapprove)
provide replies, edit, mark as spam,
or simply delete.
You may have noticed by now
that the menu Items and their respective
tabs and screens we went over are similar,
and they all allow you
to control what you post,
what your posts contain,
what comments appear on your site,
and so on and so forth.
Besides controlling
the content of your website,
you also have a lot of options
to edit its appearance
 through the Appearance menu Item.
First, there is the Themes tab, that lets you
control what your website looks like.
You can see
the default installed themes here.
Only this one is activated.
It’s important to know that your theme
influences the options you have
in your Appearance menu Item.
Another theme could provide
more tabs here.
You can find yourself a new theme,
by clicking the Add New button.
You can further customize your website
via the Customize menu item.
Here, you can change the active theme and
you can customize the site identity, colors,
how the menus and widgets appear on your site,
and what is shown on the homepage.
Again, the options you have here,
are influenced by the theme
that is active on your site.
If you’re able to code, you can also insert
your code via the Additional CSS option.
Going back to the admin menu, under
the Appearance tab we have the Widgets.
Widgets are simple, pre-built blocks that
you can add to your site, like a search bar,
or a map to locate your store.
You can manage them
through the Widgets screen.
On the left, you’ll see the available widgets
and on the right, you’ll find the areas
on your site, where you can place them.
Which widgets and widget areas you see here,
again, depends on your theme.
AND on the the plugins you’re using.
Okay, next, the Menus tab.
Here, you can create and edit
the menus that appear on your website.
And finally, when it comes to appearance,
you can edit the themes in the Theme Editor.
But, for this, you need to know how to code.
If you are unfamiliar with coding,
it’s best to not touch this part.
The next menu Item is called Plugins.
Plugins make it possible for you to add
some extra features to your website.
You can add a new plugin with this button
over here or by clicking the tab Add New.
In the overview, you can manage
the plugins that you have installed.
For us, this screen is empty, because
we haven’t installed any plugins yet.
For the advanced user,
there is also the Plugin Editor,
where you can make changes
to the code of the plugin.
You need coding skills for this, so,
for now, we will not go into that.
Let’s move on, and see
what the Users menu item is about.
I know, it’s a long video,
but we’re almost there.
The All Users tab shows you
all the users of the website.
Here, you can add users and edit
the role of each user on your website.
What’s a user?
Well, it really depends
on the type of site you have.
There are user roles like “admin”,
“subscriber”, “author”, and much more.
Depending on the roles you assign,
the rights of what a user can do, will differ.
You can edit your own profile
by clicking the Your Profile tab.
Here you can add information,
change your name, add a profile picture...
In the admin menu,
there is also the Tools menu item.
You can see the available tools here.
If you migrated
from a different platform or system,
you can import your posts
and comments via the Import tab.
For example, if you want to import posts,
comments, and users from a Blogger blog,
you can do it here.
You can also import content
from another WordPress site.
And you can import,
but you can also export your content.
As you can see, you can download your posts,
pages, and media in an exportable file.
Besides the content of your page, you can
also export or delete your personal data.
And let’s not forget the Site Health check,
a really cool feature of WordPress 5.2.
If you click it, you see two tabs:
Status and Info.
And a percentage over here, which is
an indication of how “healthy” your site is.
In our case, that’s 81%.
And we have three recommendations
to improve this.
If you click the arrow, you’ll get
some background information about the issue
and an actionable advice.
If you click “passed tests” you can see
the other items that were checked.
The other tab - Info -
shows you a lot of information about
the configuration of your WordPress site,
all in one place.
Could be really handy if, for example,
a support engineer or a developer wants
to know some technical details about your site
and you don’t know what he/she means
and where you can find it.
You can now easily export this info and
create a list for them with this button.
Really helpful.
Finally, we have arrived at the last menu item
in the admin menu: the Settings.
By the way, it’s very well possible
that more admin menu items
will appear  in your back end.
Plugins, for example, can add more items.
Okay, back to the settings.
Yes, well, since this video
is already quite long,
I’ll not discuss them here.
We’ve created a separate lesson
about the settings in module 3.
We’ll also dive a little bit deeper
into themes, widgets, plugins
and other ways to customize your site.
So, don’t worry
if this is all a bit overwhelming.
We will take you through all the different
options step by step in the following modules.
It’s going to be fun!
In the previous lessons of this module,
you've learned how to get WordPress
up and running.
We've also shown you
what the WordPress back end looks like
and what you can do with it.
However, there's one important question
we haven't discussed yet:
how will you use WordPress?
So, that's what this video will be about.
WordPress started as a blogging platform.
However, over the years it evolved
into a full content management system
which can be used to build
all kinds of websites.
You can use WordPress
in many different ways:
to create a blog, a business website,
an online store, a membership website,
or... to sell online courses.
You could also use WordPress
to create an online portfolio, a forum,
an online resume, a job listing site,
a knowledge base, or a help desk.
With the right themes and plugins,
the possibilities of WordPress are endless.
But before you start building
your WordPress site,
it's important to think about what you want
to achieve with your site:
what's the mission of your site?
The mission of your website consists
of the ideas you have about your website.
Every website owner has certain
expectations of their visitors.
You want them to read your posts,
or to buy your products.
Perhaps you want to inform
or entertain your readers
or to improve their lives
with your awesome products.
Your mission is the foundation
of your website,
so you shouldn't think too lightly of this.
Take the time and literally write down
the mission of your website.
You have to come up with one mission,
one message to send to your audience.
Once that message is clear to you,
you'll be able to communicate it
much better to your audience!
To help you formulate
the mission of your website,
we've made a list of questions
you should be able to answer.
We've included this list
in the reading materials.
Once you've written down
the mission of your site,
you can start thinking
about how you will use WordPress.
What should your website look like,
and what kind of functionalities do you need
on your site to achieve your mission?
For the example site of this course,
everydayimtravelling.com,
the mission statement
could be something like:
"We want to share our travel experiences
with the world,
and report on travel trends and tips."
The five friends want to accomplish this
by writing blog posts.
In these posts, they can write about
their experiences all over the world,
give their readers tips on where to stay
and where to eat, and much more.
But they also want to interact
with their readers,
through comments
and perhaps social media.
So, for the five friends
of everydayimtravelling.com,
it would be best to create
a WordPress-based blog.
This blog should have a comment
functionality and social sharing options.
Like the friends of our example site
everydayimtravelling.com,
most people use WordPress
for blogging.
And as we've seen,
WordPress began as a blogging platform,
so the blogging functionalities
are already built-in and ready to go.
Because of this, we'll focus on using
WordPress for blogging in this course.
Don't worry if you want to create
a different kind of site though,
we'll briefly explore
other functionalities as well!
In the next module, we'll discuss
how you can customize your website,
to really make it fit your mission.
We'll go into themes, widgets, plugins,
the WordPress customizer,
and all the different customization settings
WordPress offers.
When you start with WordPress,
you will want to brand your website
and give it a personal touch.
A good way to begin customizing your website
is with the Settings in the admin menu.
In this video, I will show you
the General Settings that allow you to edit
your title and tagline,
edit your URL, manage the registrations,
choose the language of the site
and set the time and date format.
We start in the Dashboard,
then click on the Settings Menu Item
in the Admin Menu.
This will open the General Settings screen.
The first thing you can do in the General
Settings screen is give your site a title.
The site title does not have to be the same
as the site name in the URL.
In this case, we already have a title,
and I will leave it like this.
To preview the site name
as it appears on the site,
first, click the Save Changes button
at the bottom of the screen
if you made any changes.
Then, click on the title
of the page in the Toolbar.
Your site will open, and you will
see how the title appears.
Note that the title is shown
in the tab here as well.
Next to the title of the page,
there is also the tagline.
To edit the tagline, we go back
to the General Settings screen.
We add the new tagline in the box here
by simply typing it out.
It is advisable to be concise
and precise here,
so you can get your message across
as clear as possible.
Search engines also index
your site and tagline,
so make sure to make them relevant
and increase your chances of ranking better.
For example, I will put something like:
"Learning about the world through travel" here.
We repeat the same procedure as before;
first we click save, and then we click
on the title of the page to see the change.
In this example, the site title
and the tagline are in the header.
Note that, depending on the theme you use,
this may differ.
Now that you have that covered,
let’s go back to see what else you can do
in the General Settings screen.
Below the tagline there are two boxes,
both related to the URL.
The first one refers
to the WordPress Address.
This is the address that shows
where you installed WordPress
and where your WordPress files
are stored.
In our case this is
http://everydayimtravelling.local.
And the other one is the address of the site
and in our case that is the same.
Ok, let’s see what other options
are in this screen.
Add your email address if you want to receive
notifications from WordPress
whenever someone posts a comment
or registers on your site.
To enable people to register
an account on your site,
all you need to do is tick
the 'Anyone can register' box.
With this setting enabled, people will be able
to register through the login screen.
If you allow registrations,
there are various roles you can assign.
You can manage these
through the New User Default Role menu.
We will tell you about the User roles
in more detail in Module 6.
For now, it is enough to know that
you can keep the Subscriber option
if you plan to allow anyone
to register on your site.
Subscribers will be able
to access their profile and edit it,
but they will not have
any administrative rights in your back end.
Contributors, authors, editors,
and administrators have more rights
ranging from simply being able
to write posts in the backend
(which is the role of a contributor)
to full control in the backend
(which is the role of the administrator).
Finally the last few options in the General
Settings are related to language and time.
The language option regulates the main language
of both your public site and the backend.
Click on the menu here
to reveal the available languages.
Choose the one you want by clicking on it.
Click save.
You see that the language has now changed
in this screen, as well as the admin menu.
Click on the site name.
And you see the language of the menus
on the front end changed as well.
Let’s go back and change back the language
to the default and move on.
The timezone option is handy
if you want your visitors to be able to see,
for example, when someone published a comment.
Click on the menu and
you will see the UTC options.
If you are unsure about your timezone,
scroll up and choose a city.
If your city is not listed, choose a city
that is closest to where you live.
For example, I am located
in Wijchen, the Netherlands,
but Wijchen is not in the list.
So, I choose the closest city,
which is Amsterdam.
Use the Date and Time Format options to choose
how dates and time will appear on your site.
Either click on the radio button
next to the preferred format,
or add a custom one in the box here.
The final option in the General Settings
is the Week.
Use this option if you want
to feature a calendar on your site.
Then, you can choose the day
that the calendar will start with.
So, we saw how you can personalize your site
with a Title and Tagline.
We also saw how to edit the URL,
what you can do with registrations on your page,
and how to set the language,
time and date on your site.
In the next video, we will explore
the Writing and the Reading tabs
from the Settings Menu Item.
In the previous video, we talked about
the General Settings
that can help you
put a personal stamp on your website.
In this video, we will look
at the Writing and Reading Settings.
These settings will allow you to choose
a Default post Category and Format,
adjust the settings of the RSS feed,
and determine how
your homepage is displayed.
Click on the Settings Menu Item,
then the Writing Settings tab.
And you will see
the Writing Settings Screen appear.
The first setting you have here
is the Default Post Category.
This setting simply allows you to pick
a category that WordPress will use by default
in cases when, for example, you’ve
forgotten to assign a category to a post,
or if you’ve deleted a category
that already contained some posts.
Click on the drop-down menu and you will see
the list of categories you already have.
Right now we do not have many categories.
But we will create some and show you
how to create them yourself in Module 5.
The default category for this
option is Uncategorized,
but of course you can change that
if you want to.
Next is the Default Post Format setting.
Click on the menu to reveal the options.
Note that you can change
the Default Post Format
only if the theme you have installed
supports this setting.
In this case, the Twenty Nineteen theme
does not support the Default Post Format.
If the theme you are using supports it,
you can choose a Default Post Format
from the dropdown menu.
You see that there are
many different options.
So, for example, if you have a blog
where you post a daily quote,
you can set the Quote option as the default
and have your posts appear as quotations
(as you can see in this example).
Moving on to the next setting,
we see the Post via email.
This option is somewhat advanced and
it involves creating a secret email account.
In some cases, you may also need
assistance from your web host.
These settings would also differ per case
so we will not go into the details
of how to set this up right now.
Finally, on this screen, there is
the Update Services setting.
This setting allows you to let others know
when you post new content on your site.
In the box here, there is one default URL:
rpc.pingomatic.com.
That is the default update service
that WordPress notifies
when you have published a new post.
If you click on the Update
Services link above the box,
you can access a list
of other Ping Services.
You can copy and paste them
in the Update Services box,
to add them to your list
if you wish to do so.
If you prefer, you can also remove
the default updating service.
Don’t forget to click
the Save Changes button
whenever you make changes
to any of the settings in this screen.
Otherwise your new settings
will not be saved.
That’s it.
We can now move on to the next tab
in the Settings - Reading.
On this screen,
you can choose some settings
that will regulate how your posts
are displayed on your site.
First, you can choose
what is displayed on your homepage.
It is important to think about
what you want your visitors to see
when they first open your page.
If you plan to regularly publish blog posts,
then the first option, your latest posts,
may be the way to go.
To select that option simply click on
the Your latest posts button, and click save.
If we go to the homepage
of our example site,
we see that the latest posts
are now displayed.
Use the other setting, a static page,
if you have a key important message
you want to share with your visitors.
To enable this setting, you will need to choose
a page that will be displayed on your homepage,
as well as a separate page
where your posts will be published.
Note that you must choose different pages
for the homepage and for the posts.
To be able to choose the homepage,
you will of course first need to create it.
We will show you how you can create pages
and use this setting in the next module when
we discuss pages and posts.
For now, I have created one, just to show
you how these settings work.
I will choose this page as the Homepage.
Next, I will need to choose the page
where the posts will appear.
You should create a separate page
for the posts as well,
for example, a page called Posts, or Blog.
In this case, I will choose this one
that I've previously created.
I click save, and let’s see
what that looks like on the site.
You can now see that
instead of the recent posts,
I have the 'What is this blog about'
page displayed.
The posts can be accessed
via the Posts Page in the menu,
as well as the Recent Posts
and Archive feature.
Note that if you do not assign your posts
to a separate page, they will still be visible,
but only through the other navigation features,
for example the Recent Posts or Archives.
Moving on to the next setting in this screen,
where you can choose
how many Blog posts per page
are displayed on your site.
The default option here is 10, but you can
choose to show 1 if you want to.
Change the number by simply
typing it into the box here.
You can also set the maximum number of posts
that will be sent out via your RSS feed
and whether those feeds
will contain a full text or a summary.
Finally, the last setting in this screen is
related to the Search Engine Visibility.
This setting prevents search engines, like
Google, for example, from indexing your site.
If your purpose for setting up a website is
to reach a wide audience,
then you should leave
this box unticked.
If however, for whatever reason, you want
your website to be private, do tick this box.
By selecting this setting, normal visitors
with access to your webpage link
will still be able to visit your site.
But the search engine bots
will have a harder time finding it,
and so it will also be harder
to share it with the public.
We'll explain more about this
in a later module about WordPress SEO.
It is also important to note,
as it is stated here,
that even if you have this option enabled,
it is up to the search engines
to respect the request.
Now that we went through all the settings
in the Reading Settings screen,
we can continue
to the next tab - the Discussion.
Before we do, do not forget to always save
any changes you made.
Hi!
So far, we saw the settings you can manage
to personalize your site,
to control how you publish,
and how your posts are displayed.
In this video, we will talk about the various
comment settings.
Let’s go straight into it.
Go to the Discussion settings screen
by clicking on the Settings menu item,
and then click on the Discussion tab.
The first three options are bundled under
the "Default article settings".
The first two settings relate to “pings”.
A ping is a techy way
of saying “notification”.
Clicking this option
enables you to “ping” (or notify)
sites that you have linked to in your posts.
For instance, in our example site
we could be writing
about the best restaurants
we have visited for a trip.
If we link to the site
of some of those restaurants,
and - this is important -
if the restaurant site allows it,
the mention could appear
in their comment section.
The next option in this setting regulates
the same thing, but the other way around.
So, by ticking this box,
you allow other sites to “ping” YOU.
If you are “pinged” by another site,
a comment or mention
will appear on your site.
Now, the third option is about whether you allow
people to comment on your articles or not.
You can manipulate the last two settings
for each individual post.
So, if you want to allow comments or pings
on your posts in general,
but there is one specific post that you
want to have no comments or pings on,
you can choose that
in the individual post editing page.
And this will override the general settings.
Let me show you how.
If you add a new post,
you will see the sidebar on the right.
Scroll down, and click the Discussion tab.
You can now change the general setting
by ticking or unticking the boxes.
Okay, let’s go back
and see what the “Other comment settings”
section - well that’s a mouthfull - is about.
If you check the first box, then people
who write comments on your posts
have to fill out their name and email.
If you check the second box,
people have to be registered
and logged in to comment.
But you can only do this
if registration is open.
People can only register if you have enabled
this setting in the General settings.
Let’s go there to show you what I mean.
This box “Anyone could register”
should be ticked.
Okay, let’s go back.
Next is the option
to “Automatically close comments
on articles older than
a certain amount of days”.
You can change the default
of 14 days into something else
by typing or clicking the arrows.
Moving on, we have the option
to "Show comments cookies opt-in checkbox.”
That means that the cookies of the author
of the comment will be saved.
The upside of that is that
by saving the data of the user,
they will not need to repeat
the same log-in steps every time.
And the downside is that it may feel intrusive
for the privacy of the users.
The next option allows you to choose whether
you want to have threaded comments,
and how deep they should go.
That means that instead of having replies
to comments pile up with no order,
you can choose to have a comment “thread”.
Here you can choose the level
of the thread from the menu,
with the maximum level being 10.
Note that how threaded comments appear,
depends on the theme you are using.
Another way to keep comments neat,
is to break them down into pages.
Add the number of comments
per page in this box,
and choose which comments
will appear first by clicking on this menu.
Finally, in this section you can choose
whether you want to show the older
or the newer comments first.
The next two options allow you to receive
emails when people post a comment,
or when a comment is awaiting moderation.
You can further control how comments
appear on your site
with the “Before a comment appears” options.
You can choose
to manually approve comments.
In case manually approving
each comment is too much work,
you can also choose to approve
only the comments of first-time commenters.
By choosing this option, you will enable anyone
who has previously been approved a comment
to post future comments with no restriction.
To further help you with moderation,
WordPress also has the option
to hold off comments
that contain a lot of links.
Change the default number of links
to the number you desire
by typing the number here.
Below this option you see a box.
Here you can type in the words, names, URLs,
email addresses or IP addresses
that you want queued for approval
before they appear on your site.
You can also blacklist them.
With this option, those comments
will automatically be considered as spam
and they will not appear in your queue,
nor on your site, of course.
The last option in the discussion screen
refers to the use of avatars.
Avatars are the little photos
people use as a sort of profile picture.
Besides avatars, there are also Gravatars.
These are pictures that people
can use across platforms,
to sort of maintain their identity.
With this setting, you can control
whether avatars or Gravatars appear
on your site in the comments section.
If you want to show avatars,
please make sure that you pick a theme
that supports the presence
of avatars as well.
Otherwise, ticking this box
will have no use.
Gravatars have ratings
that go from G - Suitable for all audiences,
to X - for mature audiences.
The ratings are related to the content
of the photo that is used for the Gravatar.
The owners of the Gravatars
set the ratings themselves
and here you can choose which images,
based on their rating,
you allow to appear
on your page in the comment section.
If you choose PG for example which is
"suitable for audiences 13 and above",
both G (suitable for all audiences) and PG
will be included in the allowed ratings.
The same logic is valid
for the other options.
Finally, you can choose default avatars for
people with no avatar or Gravatar of their own.
As you can see here, there are
plenty of options to choose from.
That’s it for the discussion screen.
Do take time to explore this screen, because
comments can be just as important as posts.
And don’t forget to save
your changes of course.
In this screencast, I will take you
through the last three settings tabs:
Media, Permalinks and Privacy.
When you click Media,
you’ll have a couple of options
that help you manage
images in your library.
The first thing you need to know,
is that when you upload an image,
WordPress automatically saves a copy
of that image in four different sizes:
original, thumbnail - which is very small -
medium and large.
But why would you want to edit this?
Well, imagine that there’s a certain image
size that you’d want to use very often.
Like for example, in your post,
you like to use an image of 300 x 600,
because it fits the way you want
to structure the text around the image.
In that case, you could make the standard
dimension for “medium” 300 x 600,
and you’d  be able to very easily
use the medium size
and add images to your posts quite quickly.
Now, for each of these sizes, you can set
maximum dimensions in pixels.
So, by default,
a thumbnail is 150 x 150 pixels.
For thumbnails, there’s an extra box
that allows you to decide
whether an image should be
exactly that dimension.
If so, WordPress will cut off
part of the image to fit the dimensions.
If not, it will scale
the original image proportionally.
For thumbnails, I’d advise you
to leave this box checked.
The last option at the bottom is
about managing your media library.
If you leave it checked, WordPress
will create folders for every month and year.
This makes it easier to browse through images,
so I’d definitely leave this "on"
unless you have good reasons not to.
Okay, onto the Permalinks settings.
A permalink is basically
the full URL of your post or page.
URLs should be readable
and meaningful to users.
Therefore, it’s important to consider
what URL structure fits your website.
The URLs that will show are visible
for each setting on this screen.
What works best depends on your site.
A custom structure is often a good option,
because it allows you
to pick what’s best for you.
The percentages here
indicate so-called variables.
So for the year variable, the URL will show
the year in which the post was published.
And for the category variable, the URL
will feature the category the post is in.
For most blogs, I like a category,
then post name structure.
In this way, the position of your post within
your site structure will be most clear.
As we’ll see later in this course, you can
always edit the last part of your URL
- the so called "slug" -
for every individual post you write,
so just make sure that you select a structure
that makes sense for most of your posts here,
and make any tweaks
when writing individual posts.
Lastly, there’s an "Optional” heading.
Here, you can change something
for very specific pages:
your category and tag archive pages.
These pages are automatically created
when you create a category or tag.
They are basically a list of all the posts
that are in a certain category or tag.
With this setting, you can
change the URL for those.
Like for our travel blog, imagine that
all of our categories were countries.
Normally, with the settings we chose above,
the category archive page URL would be
everydayimtravelling.local/mexico for example.
We could then enter: "countries" here,
and the category archive URL
would then become
everydayimtravelling.local/countries/mexico/
Again, this setting doesn’t influence URLs
of your posts or pages whatsoever,
just category and tag archive pages.
The Nginx documentation will only appear
for servers running Nginx.
And it’s aimed at advanced users,
so we can skip that.
The last tab we’re going to look at
in this screencast is the Privacy tab.
Here, you can edit your privacy policy.
There’s a template that WordPress provides
for you which covers some important stuff,
but it’s incomplete and depends
on additions on your part,
as you can see when I click “edit” here.
As you see at the bottom,
WordPress has set up some headings
about topics it simply can’t provide
information on because that’s up to you.
It’s wise to check the regulations
in the country you’re in
and see if your privacy
policy complies.
Luckily, the page features some
links to helpful suggestions.
You can also choose to create
your privacy policy from scratch.
And that's it for this screencast.
In this module, we'll take you through
the process of customizing your site.
A logical point of departure is your theme.
In this video, we'll explain what a theme is
and what you should consider
when choosing a theme.
A theme handles the way
your WordPress site looks.
It serves as a representation
for your brand,
but - at the same time -
takes care of the visual representation
of WordPress content and data,
like pages and posts.
Simply put, a theme is what a person
will see when visiting your website.
Our own example site,
Everydayimtravelling.com,
could look like this,
or like this,
or like this.
It all depends on the theme you choose.
WordPress comes - upon installing - with a
set of pre-installed themes to choose from.
It's very possible that none of these themes
are to your liking,
or that they don't meet your specific needs.
The beauty of WordPress is that it comes
with a huge community,
which means that there are tons
of third-party themes to choose from.
Both paid and free.
If you want to look beyond what
the pre-installed themes have to offer,
we would like to refer you
to the WordPress theme directory
at https://wordpress.org/themes/.
All themes here are reviewed and approved
by the WordPress team,
to assure their quality.
You can also access this theme directory
by logging into your WordPress back end
of your website
and navigating to Appearance;
Themes; Add New Theme.
From here it's even easier to download
and install a theme directly
into your WordPress installation.
Later on in this course we will go
into detail on how to install a theme.
But how do you decide what theme
is suitable for you and your website?
First, really try to determine
what the purpose is of your website.
Does your website serve as a business card
for you or your company
that only consists of a few static,
informative, pages?
Is your website a blog,
which is regularly updated with new posts?
Or is your website
an e-commerce platform?
Choosing a theme can be
an overwhelming process,
because of the thousands of themes
that are available.
Establishing the purpose of your website
can really help you in choosing a theme.
It can serve as a filter
to narrow down your options.
The WordPress plugin directory -
for example - offers those filters.
But a lot of theme vendors out there,
offer roughly the same approach.
Apart from the fact that a theme should fit
the purpose of your website,
there are other things to consider
when choosing a theme.
First off, depending on your experience
with WordPress,
it might be a good idea to choose
a theme that offers support.
That way you can get assistance
with setting up or customizing your theme.
Be mindful of the fact
that not all themes offer support.
Another thing to be aware of
is that the theme is mobile-ready.
This means that your website is
properly accessible for mobile devices.
The best way to test this
is to activate the theme
and check it yourself
on your mobile phone.
Try to establish whether the mobile
experience is satisfying enough to you.
The final thing we'd like to mention -
and this one is fairly technical -
is that the theme should be
cross-browser compatible.
This is an interesting way of saying
that the theme should work properly
in all the popular browsers,
both on desktop and mobile devices.
The reason for this is that not all browsers
support the same web technologies.
A theme developer
should take this into account.
But not all do.
So be sure to test this yourself
when setting up your website.
So, in this video, we mentioned four things
to keep in mind when selecting a theme.
Pick a theme that fits
the purpose of your website.
Consider whether you need
a theme that offers support.
And make sure that your theme
works properly on mobile devices
and all popular browsers.
Once you picked your theme,
the next step is to install it.
In the upcoming screencast,
we'll show you exactly how to do this.
In this screencast, we will walk you
through the process
of installing and activating a new theme.
When you are logged in to your WordPress site,
and you are on the Dashboard
you can go to the Themes overview
by going to Appearance; Themes.
This is where you manage
your installed themes.
WordPress comes
with a few pre-installed themes,
with one of them
already activated on your website.
This distinction is important.
An installed theme is not automatically
active on your website.
The active theme is the theme that your visitors
will see when navigating to your website.
When you go to the top left corner
and click "Visit Site",
you can see how it looks.
There's not a lot there,
but you get the idea.
If you want to use another theme
on your website,
you can do so by hovering over
the other themes in your overview.
This triggers two options:
"Activate" and "Live Preview".
"Activate" immediately activates
this theme on your website,
which - as we stated before -
makes it visible to your visitors.
This might not be something
you want at this stage.
It’s always advisable to first test
how a theme looks on your website
before you activate it.
To do this, you could choose
the "Live Preview" option.
This will take you
to the so-called Customizer,
which we'll discuss later in this course.
Here you are able to check out
and test how your website will look
with this specific theme activated.
Happy with how it looks?
Then you can click "Activate & Publish"
at the top left of the screen.
This activates the theme.
Clicking the cross next to it will take you
back to the theme overview.
Here you’ll notice that the theme you
just activated, is indeed marked as active.
It is possible to install a new theme
of your choosing.
You can do this by clicking "Add New"
at the top of the theme overview,
or by clicking the large
"Add New Theme" tile.
Here you see an overview
of available themes you can install.
You can either use the available filters
at the top of the screen,
or use the search field
at the top right of the screen
to narrow down your choice.
If you've found a theme to your liking,
you can either choose to first preview it,
or directly install it.
Installing the theme
doesn’t automatically activate it.
Once it is installed
you can choose to activate it
by hovering over the theme
and clicking "Activate",
or by navigating back
to your themes overview
and clicking "Live Preview",
or "Activate" here.
As you could see
now this theme is active.
It might not look like much
when you don't have content yet,
but we'll fix that soon.
If you've downloaded your theme
from a third party,
you can upload this by - again - choosing
"Add New" in your themes overview.
At the top of this screen is
the option to upload a theme
You will be presented with an option
to upload a .zip file for the theme.
Click "Choose file",
navigate to the .zip file that you need,
open, and "Install Now".
Your theme will be installed and
added to your themes overview.
There you are able
to activate or preview it.
That’s it!
For now, we'll choose
the default theme again.
And in the next lesson we’ll show which options
you have to further customize your site.
Now that you’ve selected a theme,
you’ll probably want to tweak it
to your personal preferences.
To make it easy for you,
WordPress created the Customizer.
With the Customizer, you can quickly
make changes to the design of your site,
or the elements on your pages,
such as your site branding,
you menus, and you widgets.
And you won’t have to touch any code!
You can find the Customizer
by going to Appearance; Customize.
If you’re looking at your site
and you are logged in,
you can also find this option
in the toolbar at the top.
This opens a new interface with a preview
of your website on the right
and a menu full of interesting
settings on the left.
So let’s dig in and
see what we can find.
By the way, the settings you see here
are the default options in the Customizer,
but additional options may appear here
depending on which theme you are using.
Oh, and these icons down here,
they allow you to preview
how your changes look on different devices.
Let's go to site identity.
That's all about
the branding of your site.
What do you want visitors to see
at the top of every page on your site?
Well, let’s start with a logo.
We’ve got a nice logo set up here.
Let’s open it, upload it
to the media library, select it.
And there it is.
At the top of your page
next to your title and tagline.
You can also change your title
and tagline in the Customizer.
Now, we’ve already changed
the tagline in the General Settings,
but let’s change it again here,
to show you how it works.
Let's change it from
“Learning about the world through travel”
to “A WordPress site about travelling.”
You can also upload a site icon.
Do you know what that is?
You won’t see it on your page,
but you can find it in the browser tab.
Let me show you.
An image of the logo
could work here as well,
so let’s select the one
that’s already in the media library.
Select.
No need to crop it.
And here you are,
the menu shows you a preview
of how this will look.
And of course,
we can also check it ourselves.
Here it is.
Let’s go back
to the next section: Colors.
Colors allow you to change the global
colors from things like links and buttons.
Again, it depends on the theme
which things you can actually change.
If we scroll down, we see
a button and some links.
As you can see, they are all blue.
Now, we can change that
by clicking “Custom”
and then play a bit with the colors.
Maybe a shade of green
because that’s in our logo as well.
Although blue is also nice.
But I like green more,
so it’s going to be green.
If you tick this box, a greenish filter will
be applied to your featured image as well.
You can not set a featured image
in the Customizer,
so we’ll come back to that later.
You’ll notice that the featured image
will look pretty green, once we’ve set it.
Could be really ugly.
Let’s move on to Menus.
Menus help visitors navigate your site,
to find what they need.
And that’s really important.
So, here can you customize where
your menus will appear on your site
and which pages are included
in your menu.
It depends on your theme how many
areas you have to locate a menu.
It says here
that our theme has three.
Let’s check them out!
Ok, we have a primary menu,
a footer menu
and a social links menu.
Nice.
Well, let’s create a new primary menu
to help customers make sense of our site.
Add a name here,
like main menu.
And now we can start adding items.
Yes!
You can add different types of items:
posts and pages, but also
categories and tags and custom links.
You can select any post,
or page, or category, or tag
that you’ve created so far.
In our case, that’s not much.
Creating content is something we’re
going to tackle later in this course.
But I’ve created some pages
without telling you.
Yeah, sneaky I know.
But with these pages
we can create a basic menu.
Of course,
I want to link to my homepage.
Then let’s add this page
with an overview of our posts,
everything that we’ve written so far
that’s always good.
“What is this blog about?”
is, of course, an important page.
And the only other page that we have
here right now is a sample page
but we are going to delete
this page in the future,
so I will not include it in the menu.
So now we have a really basic menu.
You can also reorder
the items by drag and drop
or with these little arrows.
And it’s not only up and down,
but you can also add
some hierarchy here, like this.
That’s enough for now.
We’ll come back to menus
and it becomes a little predictable
later in this course.
What’s next?
Widgets lets you add
useful little elements to your page,
such as a search bar, recent posts,
tag cloud, and much more.
We’ll look at widgets in-depth
in the next lesson.
But you can already see them
down here.
We have some standard ones,
like Search,
Recent Posts,
Recents Comments,
Archives, Categories and Meta.
And if you want to add a new one,
you can do that here.
Then, what’s left here
are the Homepage settings.
Here you can select whether you want your
blog posts to show up on your homepage,
or a static landing page.
Right now, we don’t have
a suitable static page.
But we could select the sample page
to see what it looks like
A static landing page could be useful
if your site is,
for example, about
promoting a brand, or an event.
Or if you’re selling
a product.
Then, you want a nice-looking page
that introduces the visitor to your brand,
event or product.
But since everydayimtravelling
is a blog,
we want the blog posts to appear
on the homepage,
and so we won’t have to change
this setting.
Finally, Addtional CSS let’s you
add your own code
to style specific elements on the page
if you cannot style them
with the Customizer.
This is for more advanced users, so
we won’t discuss it in this beginners course.
So, those are the default options
in the Customizer,
but, as I’ve said before,
additional options may appear
down here
depending on which theme
you are using.
You may also notice some
pencil icons in your website preview.
These are shortcuts to open
the settings for this specific element
such as the menu
or the site identity
or, if we scroll down again
each of these widgets
has its own shortcut as well.
So that's very convenient.
Ok, and let’s not forget this
very important button over here.
Any changes you make
in the Customizer will not be visible
to your visitors
until you click Publish.
So feel free to experiment.
Changes can even be scheduled
to go live at some point in the future.
Just like posts!
But for now, let’s click Publish
and take a look at our website.
You can close the Customizer
by clicking the X in the left corner.
And here we see that
on our live website,
we now have the logo, the menu
and the new colors.
So, while the customizer is useful to quickly
adjust the basic styling of your site,
it doesn’t yet let you change the entire layout
of your posts and pages.
WordPress is working
on that functionality,
but for now you will have to use
the post or page editor,
which, we will discuss
- wait for it -
later in this course.
If you really want to create a theme
that fits your exact needs,
and you know how to write
HTML, CSS and PHP,
you can create
your own themes.
We won’t discuss this
in this course,
but any good WordPress developer for hire
should be able to do this.
You can consider doing this if you want
to take your site to the next level,
but with all the themes available
in the WordPress themes directory
combined with the power
of the Customizer,
you should definitely be able to find
something that suits your needs.
In the previous lessons we've discussed
themes and the WordPress Customizer.
In this lesson, we'll talk about another
aspect of customizing your site: widgets.
A WordPress widget is a simple,
pre-built block you can add to your site
that serves a specific function.
OK, that sounds really abstract.
Let's just take a look
at some widgets.
Like the search bar widget.
If you add the search bar widget
to your sidebar,
your visitors will be able
to search the pages of your site.
That's great, right?
And it's really,
really simple to add,
which you'll see
in the upcoming screencast.
That's the magic of widgets.
Your site gets a little something special
without too much hassle.
Even if you're not very technical
and you don't know how to code,
you can add lots of functionalities
to your site, simply by adding widgets.
And you have tons of widgets
that do all kinds of different things
that may be convenient for your site.
Like showing a list
of your most recent posts.
Or an image, or an audio player.
And much more!
With these widgets, you can give your site
the look and feel you prefer,
and make your website more suitable
to the content you want to offer.
We'll go into several types
of widgets in a bit,
but let's focus
on the practical applications first.
So where can you place
these widgets on your site?
Well, you can't just randomly
put widgets anywhere.
Widgets can only be put
into so-called "widget areas".
These areas are defined by your theme
and are usually located in the sidebars
and the footer of your site, which also
means that widgets often appear sitewide,
so across several pages.
However, some themes
don't include any widget areas,
so if you want to use widgets, it's wise
to check for this when selecting a theme.
Now, onto the types of widgets
that are available to you.
WordPress offers a selection
of useful widgets by default.
Let's take a look
at the most used ones in detail.
First of all, the "Text" widget.
This is the most versatile default widget,
because it allows you to add nearly anything
to one of your site's widget areas.
This could be a simple text,
a collection of links, or a media file.
Second, there's the "Search" widget.
This widget adds a fully functional
search bar to your site,
which helps your visitors to easily find
what they're looking for on your site.
Third, there's the "Recent posts" widget.
As the name already implies,
this widget adds a list
of your most recent posts to your site,
so your visitors will be encouraged
to read more of your latest content.
Other default widgets are, for example,
the "Recent comments" widget,
the "Archives" widget,
the "Categories" widget,
the "Calendar" widget,
and the "Gallery" widget.
We'll go into these widgets
in more detail in the reading materials.
Most of these widgets allow you to enter
a title and tweak a few basic settings.
When adding a widget, we recommend you
to look through these options
and make sure they match your needs.
In the screencast in this lesson,
we'll show you how you can add a widget
to your site and set the options.
In addition to the default widgets, there are
non-default, third-party widgets as well,
created by the WordPress community.
These widgets allow you
to personalize your site even more.
Firstly, some themes offer additional
widgets besides the default ones.
For example, a theme dedicated
to selling products in an online store
will most likely offer
a "Most popular products" widget
that you can place on your site.
Secondly, lots of plugins add widgets
that help you enhance your site.
There are a number of plugins
that add a new widget,
or a bundle of widgets
to your dashboard.
For example,
there's a plugin that allows you
to add social media sharing buttons
and icons as a widget to your site.
We'll go into plugins,
where to find them
and how to install them
in the next lesson of this module!
Hi, in the previous video,
we explained what widgets are.
Now, in this screencast I am going to show you
how to publish, change or remove a widget
in the WordPress back end.
You can find your widgets
through the widget menu page - obviously -
but also through the customizer.
Let’s first go to the widget menu page,
by clicking the Appearance menu item.
Here, you’ll find an overview of the widgets
and the widget areas
that are available for your theme.
Widget areas are the areas
where you can place widgets.
In our case, that’s a footer menu.
Let’s move from back end to front end
to see what it looks like.
Let’s move down to the footer menu.
Now, let’s go back
and let’s try to add a new widget.
For example, the search widget over here.
This one.
Now, to insert a new widget,
drag it from the left side
into a widget area on the right.
You can see empty blocks appear
as soon as you hover above the footer menu.
Drop your widget.
And the widget is immediately saved!
If we switch back
to the front end of the website
and move to the bottom of the page,
our search widget is shown here.
Now, let's say you want to change a widget.
Let's go back to the back end.
Click the widget you want to change.
For example...
It folds open with options
that you can fill in, select or change.
For example, let’s add
a title to the search widget.
Let’s call it “Search”.
Then, click save and you’re done.
If we switch back to the front end,
we see that the widget now
has indeed a title: “Search”.
Of course, you can also remove widgets.
Click the widget you want to get rid off.
In this case, we are going
to delete the search widget.
Click delete and you’re done.
And you can also remove widgets
by dragging them out of the widget area
and dropping them at the left, like this.
You can also manage your widgets,
through the Customizer over here,
the same spot where you can
change the look and feel of your theme.
This way, you can check how your change looks
before you publish the changes.
To access the widgets in the Customizer,
select “widgets” in the left sidebar.
Now, let’s add a new one here.
Click “add a widget”
and then select the widget
you would like to add.
And again, I would like to add
the search widget.
The widget now opens in the sidebar and
you can also check how it looks over here.
Here it is.
You can modify the widget to your likings
directly in the sidebar
or by clicking the pencil icon.
Let’s add the title
“What are you looking for?”
to see how it looks.
If you’re satisfied, click “publish”.
And if you're not...
change it again,
and then hit "publish".
Now, to remove a widget:
Click it.
Click “remove”.
And “publish”.
That’s it!
Not that difficult, right?
As I’ve said before, different themes come
with different widget options
and different widget areas.
Now, I’m going to change the theme
to show you what I mean.
Let's go back to themes,
and activate this one.
Then go to Widgets.
Well, this theme offers more widget
options and more widget areas.
And of course, it’s up to you
to find out what fits your site.
We haven’t discussed plugins so far,
but they can provide you
with more widget options as well.
Take our Local SEO plugin for example.
This plugin is meant for people
who own a small local business,
like a bakery or a painting company.
It’s not useful for our example site
Everydayimtravelling,
since that is not a local business.
But I’ve installed it anyway,
just to show you
the extra widgets that come with it.
As you can see here, these widgets help you
to enhance your contact page.
Because people searching for stores nearby
want to find directions - a map and a route -,
opening hours and contact details - like
an address, phone number or email address.
Again, it’s up to you
to find out what fits your site.
So, go and explore!
In this video,
we're going to discuss something
that can really unlock a lot
of the power of WordPress: plugins.
Plugins are extra pieces of software
that you install to add extra features
and functionality to your WordPress site.
They allow you to go beyond what a basic
WordPress installation has to offer.
In a way, a default WordPress installation
is very like a phone on factory settings.
It has a number of things pre-installed
which are very valuable
and cover the core
of what a phone needs to do.
But often, you want more.
You want things
that are specifically useful to you.
To do that, you install the apps
you like and need.
With WordPress, plugins are just
like those extra apps that you install
to be able to do all kinds
of different things.
They allow you to use WordPress
to its full and most customized potential.
And just like there are apps
for anything and everything,
there are over 50.000 WordPress plugins
that all do different things.
Too many to go through in detail here!
There are plugins that help you rank
in the search engines or set up an online shop
or help improve performance.
The possibilities are countless.
We'll give you a more specific idea
of what plugins can do
as we explore them
in a bit more detail later in this video.
But first, let me spend
a couple more minutes
on what you should look out for
when selecting and installing plugins.
It's really important
not to just download and install
every plugin that seems vaguely useful.
Don't install plugins from sources
you don't trust, for example.
Remember, you're adding the plugin
to your own website,
which can leave all kinds of doors
open for abuse.
There are malicious plugins out there
that you definitely want to stay away from.
Plugins that are available
through the WordPress back end
and on wordpress.org
can generally be trusted.
But trustworthiness isn't the only issue.
Quality is obviously important as well.
You want to be sure
that the plugin you install
does exactly what you want it to do,
and does it well.
And don't be fooled:
it's perfectly possible that a lot
of available plugins don't do a great job.
Or simply don't match
your website's needs.
It's not as simple as:
I'll install a security tool,
and "my security is taken care of".
And performance
is a complex issue as well:
just like your phone slows down when
you install too many slow apps,
or too many apps,
plugins can really bog down your website.
Moreover, some plugins
actively offer support,
whereas others hang you out to dry.
So, in short, you want to install
a limited number of plugins,
that fit your needs
and do what you need them to do.
Obviously, that requires some research
and potentially some tough choices.
So let's explore
what plugins can do in more detail.
Let's take a very quick look
at what our own Yoast SEO plugin does
to illustrate the added value of plugins.
Once you install and activate Yoast SEO,
a number of things
change in your WordPress installation.
For one, you get some additional settings
that help you configure your site more
specifically than the default ones can.
Secondly, some elements of your pages
and site are improved automatically,
as the plugin adds code
that helps search engines understand it.
And most notably, you can optimize your posts
and content with added functionality
that shows up when you're writing a post.
There are also plugins that help you
speed up your website.
For example, they may store
data in a cache,
which makes sure that pages load faster
for returning visitors.
Or they make your files smaller
so that they load more quickly.
Other plugins may filter out spam comments
so that you don't have to,
or secure your website from malicious
software with things like firewalls,
or security improvements
on top of the default login system.
Other plugins might allow you to set up
an online store to sell your products,
or completely change the look-and-feel
of your website,
or help you publish your pages
in different languages.
To make a long story short, there are tons
of plugins that you can download and install
which do tons of useful things.
We've chosen not to discuss specific plugins
besides our own in this course,
because there are just too many and
we don't want to play favourites too much.
Just know that it's really
worthwhile to check
whether there are any plugins
that could make your life easier.
Chances are there will be loads of them.
Just click "plugins" in the admin menu
and you'll have access to a huge list
that you can check out and explore.
Clicking on the plugin name triggers a popup
in which you'll find a description
of what the plugin does, including reviews.
Do note, though, that the list of plugins
you'll find there is not complete.
The plugins you'll find there are all free.
There are also loads of paid plugins
around the web.
Our Yoast SEO Premium plugin,
for example,
can't be found
through the WordPress search engine,
nor can several other useful plugins that
can definitely make life much easier for you.
So it's worth taking a deep dive into any
plugins that can kick-start your website.
Lastly, it's also very important
to regularly update your plugins.
Plugins can become security risks
if you don't manage them properly.
Many plugins routinely fix
security risks in new updates,
so updating them regularly
is really important.
We'll get back to this in the lesson
on WordPress updates later in this course.
That's it for the theory on plugins!
In the upcoming screencast,
we'll show you exactly how to install,
activate and manage your plugins
right from the WordPress back end.
Hi there and welcome back.
Now that you know what plugins are,
let’s see how you can use them.
In WordPress, you can install
plugins in three ways:
from the WordPress Plugin Repository
that you can access from the back end;
by uploading
a previously downloaded plugin;
or by using FTP.
In this video, I will tell you
how to install plugins
via the Plugins menu item
in your back end,
and I will also tell you how you can manage
your plugins once they are installed.
In the next video, we’ll show you
how to upload a plugin.
We will not install plugins
via FTP in this course,
since that’s a bit more advanced.
Now, let’s begin.
Once you are in your back end,
go to the plugins menu item
in the admin menu.
If you want to immediately add a new plugin,
select the Add New tab.
If you want to go to the overview
of the plugins you already have,
just click the plugins menu item right here.
As you can see,
the plugin screen is empty.
That’s because I’ve cheated a bit.
I’ve installed the Yoast SEO Premium
and the Local SEO plugin,
to show you some widgets
in the previous lesson.
But I’ve deleted them afterwards, so that
we can start from scratch in this screencast.
So, let’s do that.
You can add a new plugin
by clicking on the Add New button.
What you see here is the WordPress plugin
repository with many plugins to choose from.
That’s nice, right?
But, it is important to note that only free
and approved plugins, like Yoast SEO,
can be found in the repository.
That means that there are also plugins that
you could use that are not included here,
like Yoast SEO Premium.
No worries, if you want to use a plugin
that’s not in the repository,
you can install them yourself.
We’ll show you how, in the next video.
Back to the repository.
In the top menu you can choose plugins
from different categories.
The search bar allows you
to quickly search for a plugin.
You can search either for a particular plugin,
or based on a keyword.
Let’s see what happens
if we type in "Yoast".
Voila, here’s the free Yoast SEO plugin.
Let’s quickly scan the information here.
In the Yoast SEO plugin box
you can see the name of the plugin.
And you can also see a short description,
reviews, and the latest update.
Most importantly, and this is something
you should pay attention to
you see whether the plugin is compatible
with the version of WordPress you are using.
In this case, you can see that Yoast SEO
is compatible with this version.
It is important to always check
the compatibility,
to ensure that your plugins work optimally.
If you want to know more about the plugin,
click on the more details link or on the name.
A new window will pop up and
you will see a lot more information.
By the way, different plugins organize
their information differently.
So, do not expect to see
exactly the same format for all.
So, once you have checked
all the information and you are satisfied
with what the plugin has to offer,
you want to install it.
That’s easy.
Simply click on the Install Now button.
Once the installation is done
you will receive a message that the plugin
was successfully installed.
However, simply installing
the plugin is not enough.
Step 2 is to activate it.
So, click on the Activate button.
You will see the plugins screen appear.
The Yoast SEO plugin
is now installed and activated.
You can see that two new Yoast SEO
menu items were created here,
in the admin menu and in the toolbar.
The location of the plugin menu items
will, of course, differ per plugin.
And some will also have
no visible menu items at all.
Now that we have installed our plugin,
let’s go back to the plugins screen
and see what other options there are.
Once you have more plugins,
you will see more options here,
such as Inactive, Recently Active,
or Updates Available.
Just below the links,
there is the Bulk Actions menu.
This menu gives you the option to activate,
deactivate, update and delete
multiple plugins at once.
To apply one of these actions, you will need
to tick the box next to the plugin name.
Select an action, for example, "deactivate"
and then click on the apply button.
Deactivating will turn the plugin off,
and it will no longer function,
but it will still be installed and available
once you need it again.
This allows you to switch a plugin
on an off as you see appropriate.
You can now see that the plugin
has been deactivated,
and that the options you have
are to activate or delete.
Note that you can only delete
a plugin once it is deactivated.
That’s it.
You now know how to install
and manage your plugins.
Good luck!
In this video, we will see
how to upload a plugin
that you previously downloaded
on your computer.
The plugins that you can find
in the WordPress plugin repository
- as we already mentioned -
are always free.
If you want to use a paid plugin,
or a plugin that is not featured
in the WordPress repository,
you will need to download it
from an external site.
For example, the Yoast SEO plugin
has a premium version.
After you have purchased
Yoast SEO Premium,
you will be able to download a .zip file
containing the plugin data.
I have already previously
downloaded the file
so we can move straight
to uploading it to WordPress.
We begin by clicking the plugins menu item
in the admin menu.
Then, we click on the Add New button
that takes us to Add Plugins screen.
You can see that in this screen,
at the very top is the Upload Plugin button.
We click the button,
and the screen expands.
Here, we can upload the Yoast SEO Premium
.zip file we previously downloaded.
Now, note that there is only an option
to upload a file in .zip format.
If your plugin is downloaded
in another format,
you will need to contact
your plugin provider and ask for assistance.
In this case, Yoast SEO Premium
is neatly packaged
so we can easily proceed.
I choose the file
from the downloads folder.
I press open.
And then Install Now.
Now we wait for the installation to progress
and once it's done
we'll be taken to a new screen
that informs us that the plugin
was installed successfully.
Now, the next step, as we've already
previously mentioned,
is to activate the plugin,
so we press Activate Plugin.
The plugin is now succesfully
activated and installed
and we can see that
the Yoast SEO icon appears
both in the admin menu
and the toolbar.
Of course,
as I already previously mentioned
where the plugin icons appear
will differ per plugin
and some plugins will have
no icons at all.
The remaining options for editing,
deactivating, or deleting the plugin
remain the same as we discussed
in the previous video.
So that is it!
You are now ready to install plugins both
through the WordPress plugin repository
and upload plugins
that you have previously downloaded.
Hey!
In the previous videos, we saw what
plugins are and how you can install them.
We dedicate this video to a particular type
of WordPress plugins: page builders.
How come these plugins
get special treatment?
Because as a beginner,
the chance that you will stumble
upon the term "page builder" is quite high.
We want to make sure
you understand what they are.
So let's roll up our sleeves
and start learning.
Don't let the name fool you.
Page builders are not some super complicated
things only developers understand.
They are quite simple to use.
That is why they are popular
among WordPress users.
A page builder is a plugin that lets you
easily structure and design your site's pages.
It does this with a special visual editor.
What's so special about it?
Well, if you install a page builder plugin,
you will likely need to replace
the default WordPress page (or post) editor
with the page builder visual editor.
All of this may still sound abstract to you,
so let's look at some examples.
There are a lot
of website builders out there.
A very popular one is Elementor.
The basic version of this plugin
is available for free.
There is a paid Pro version available too,
which offers more features and templates.
Here is how it works.
After you install and activate the plugin,
you won't see immediate changes.
But, when you open the page or post editor,
you will see this button.
Click on the button, and you will access
Elementor's visual editor.
You can use the visual blocks,
drag and drop them to your page or post
and build content that way.
The visual editor allows you to play around
and create content just as you want it!
The visual editor is also a live preview.
So, anything you create will appear on your
website just as you see it in the editor.
Another popular page builder plugin,
Beaver Builder, works similarly.
When you open your page editing screen,
this plugin will also allow you
to choose where you edit your content.
Choose the Beaver Builder,
and you will edit with its visual editor.
Again, you can drag and drop
to your heart's delight
and build the page of your dreams.
But, not all page builders work like this.
For example, another widely used
page builder is Divi.
This one works a bit differently
because it's part of the Elegant Themes
membership package.
Elegant Themes develops
WordPress themes, such as Divi.
Yes, Divi is both a theme -
which includes the page builder -
and a separate page builder plugin.
Unlike the other two, there are only
paid versions for this page builder,
and the price depends
on the package you get.
Ok, now that you understand page builders,
let's dig a bit deeper into their usefulness.
Like most things in life, there is a positive
and a negative side to using page builders.
Let's look at the positive one first.
A big plus with page builders
is that you can build a page
without writing a single line of code.
They are usually straightforward to use and
have lots of different options and choices.
They offer tons of page elements,
such as a text element, video element,
or an image gallery.
All you need to do is drag the elements
and drop them on your page.
To sum up - page builders make it
super easy to build pages and websites!
That sounds great,
why would there be a negative side?
Page builders allow you to do
a lot without looking into code.
And that is where things
may sometimes go wrong.
There are indeed many elements
you can add to a page with a page builder.
As a result of that,
it's simply too easy to make heavy pages,
something we see often.
That can slow down your site,
which can affect your SEO negatively.
So if you use a page builder,
do make sure you test your site
and make sure it stays fast.
Now you know what page builders are,
how they work,
and what you need to consider
before using them.
Stick around for the next module,
where we will see how you can start writing
and editing your content!
This module is all about how to create content
that you can display on your site.
But before we start doing that, we
need to know what types of content there are.
So let’s review!
By default, WordPress has two major content
types: posts and pages.
They look very similar, both in the back end
and on your actual website.
But what sets them apart?
Well, it has to do with the role that the
content you want to write
will play on your site.
There are a number of things that set pages
and posts apart, which we’ll discuss
one by one in this video.
Firstly, posts are content where the time
of the publication is relevant.
For pages, the publication date doesn’t
really matter.
To really understand this, let’s remember
what WordPress started as: a blogging platform.
On a blog, there’s a clear distinction between
these types of content.
On one hand, you have your blog posts,
which you write and put up
with a certain regularity.
They need to be fresh and current,
and to reflect what’s happening
in the world, right now.
This also means that, as time passes,
they may become less relevant, or less accurate.
Like, if we’re writing an article on how
Google understands text, that might be
completely differently in five years.
We’ll have to edit that post, or write a
new one to show how it works then.
So, posts show what something is,
or was like, at a point in time.
On the other hand, your website also has
a number of pages that are basically static
and not subject to the passage of time.
Like this arts and crafts page, where
we put up some coloring pages
and other creative stuff
for children to enjoy.
Nobody cares when this was published, and
it won’t be less useful five years from now.
The same goes for our
Yoast SEO plugin product page.
It’s simply not very relevant
when a product was first launched
for the visitors to that page.
Of course, you’ll still have
to manage these pages
and you may want to make
regular changes over time,
but, pages are just not as fleeting
or as temporal as blog posts are.
A second difference, is the fact that for posts,
it can matter who wrote the content.
Visitors want to know who wrote a post.
So, when our founder Joost de Valk writes
an article on technical SEO for example,
people know they can trust what he’s saying.
Moreover, posts are often written
from a more personal perspective.
For pages, the author is much less relevant.
We don’t display authors on our product pages
or our "About us" page, for example,
because who wrote that page
doesn’t really matter to visitors.
That’s why WordPress displays
authors on posts, but not on pages.
Thirdly, posts are archived in WordPress,
whereas pages are not.
You can show your recent blog posts,
for example, in a widget.
You also have pages that show archives
of posts within certain blog categories,
or within certain tags.
We’ll come back to that in the next module,
but your most recent posts show up
at the top here, as well.
So again, there’s the element
of time and recency.
Lastly, posts are meant
to spark interaction.
Your users can comment on posts,
whereas they can’t comment on pages.
This makes a lot of sense when we look
at the examples we discussed earlier.
Comments make sense on informational
blog posts or personal experiences,
where, you can have a discussion about
something you can think differently about.
That doesn’t really make sense on pages.
So on pages, comments are disabled
by default in WordPress.
Well, there you have it: four important
differences between posts and pages.
The easiest way to remember it, is probably
that the content of posts can become outdated
as the world (or your perspective
on the world) can change,
whereas pages only need to be updated
when you change something about
how your website or your business works.
So let’s categorize some types of content.
When should you use posts,
and when should you use pages?
Well, just to give you an idea,
these types of content are usually posts:
blog posts (obviously),
news articles, announcements,
think pieces, essays, tutorials, interviews,
personal stories and case studies.
And these types of content are usually pages:
product information, FAQs, terms of use,
privacy pages, partner information,
about us pages, and contact pages.
There’s are a lot more possibilities,
but I’m sure you get the point.
Now, onto the next video, in which we show you
exactly how to write your posts and pages!
In this video we’ll get to the most exciting
thing in WordPress
and see how you actually
write a post.
I’m going to show you
how to write a post,
but it works exactly the same
for pages, so no worries there.
The only differences are
in the options in the sidebar,
which we’ll explore in the screencast
about the sidebar in this same module.
To start writing, click on Posts
and then the Add New button.
You’ll end up on a screen
that gives you a whole lot of options.
Especially if you’ve already
installed some plugins,
they may occupy
some space as well.
But let’s ignore all of these things
and focus on the big block
of white space in the middle.
That’s where you’re going
to write your post.
The first thing you need to do
is already laid out for you.
Add a title.
Enter the title of the post
you want to create,
and in our case that's:
"Top tourist attractions in Istanbul".
And now, you’re going to have to make
the first of many decisions.
Whether to start writing
or use a block.
So what are blocks?
Well, everything you do in the post editor
is divided up into a block.
In its simplest form,
a block can be a paragraph.
A block can be a heading as well.
But a block can be an image
with a caption,
or video, or all kinds
of interesting things.
We’re going to go into these interesting
things more in detail in a later screencast.
For now, let’s first write
a little introduction to the article.
For example,
I will put this text.
Now, I want this introduction
to be in italics.
To do that,  I simply
double-click on the text to select it
and click the “I” right above the text.
I can also put the text in bold,
You can also align the text left,
center, or right as you see here.
Or you can add a link
to a part of your text.
On the far left, you can also transform
the block into another type.
Like if I’d want to start with a quotation.
I could use the quote block here
and transform the introduction
into a quote.
But I don’t want to do that actually,
so let’s change it back
to a simple paragraph.
There’s also a “more options” option
on the far right.
This allows you to duplicate the block,
insert another block
before or after this block,
and to edit the block as HTML if you want
to do some fancy HTML stuff.
You probably won’t need to use
these options very often.
Once you’ve finished your introduction,
simply press enter
and you’ll automatically
create a new block.
Now, I want to discuss three hotspots
in Istanbul, in my article
so it makes sense to create a heading
for every one of them.
Headings show your readers
what’s coming
and allow them to scan quickly
to see whether the content is
interesting for them.
So let’s create a heading for the first
hotspot we’re going to discuss:
the Hagia Sophia.
Click the little plus symbol
on the left, right here
and add a heading block.
As you can see, you can create
an H2, H3 or H4.
That’s because the H1 is always
the title of the page.
Headings show hierarchy.
So we’re going to use H2s
for every hotspot,
because all of them
are equally important to our article.
So, let’s type in
Hagia Sophia here
and press enter
to create another paragraph.
Now, let me just copy-paste
the rest of the sample article in
to save us all time.
If you’re copy-pasting
from another source,
always check to see
whether it all works.
In this case, it works fine.
So that’s nice!
Now, say you want to switch around
two of the paragraphs you’ve written
because that would be
better for the article.
That’s very easy to do.
Just select the paragraph
you want to move, then hover over it,
and then click one of the arrows
you see on the left of the block.
They’ll move up
and down accordingly.
And if you want
to remove a block,
just select the text,
and then press backspace.
If you want to remove
several blocks at once,
you can simply select them
and again, press backspace!
Let's just undo this and return
to our original article.
Ok, so now we’ve got a complete post
with an introduction,
three hotspots, and a conclusion.
Of course, if I were to write a real article,
it would probably be a lot longer,
but this was just to illustrate how
writing a post works.
Once you’ve finished your post,
you can save it as a draft here.
Or publish it
at the top right of your screen.
If you publish the post, visitors on your
site will be able to see and read it,
so don't do this unless you’re sure
you feel good about the post.
Before you publish,
it’s always smart to preview
what your post looks like
on your actual site.
I’ve stuck to the basics here,
but if you’re doing more fancy things,
which we’re going to do
in the upcoming screencasts,
you’ll always want to check whether
everything shows the way you want it to.
To do this, you go to the top,
right corner of your screen
and click “preview”.
WordPress will generate a preview
of what the page will look like.
And that’s it!
Now, you are ready
to start writing your first post.
Now that you have seen
how to create posts,
in this video, I will show you
how to add images to a post.
First, I want to add an image below
the Hagia Sophia paragraph.
To do that, I click Enter
below the paragraph
to create a new block.
And then I click
on the plus button here
and choose the Image block.
This is the Image block, where you can
add images in four different ways.
You can upload an image,
select it from the Media Library,
insert an image from a URL,
or drag and drop an image
into the box.
Let’s try the Upload option first.
I click on Upload,
and a dialogue box will open,
where you can choose an image
that is stored on your computer.
I find the image I want to use,
I select it
and then click Open.
And the image is now
added to the text.
Below the image,
there is the option to write a caption.
All you need to do is type in the text.
On the right side, you see a sidebar,
with more settings
for adjusting the image.
The first thing you can do
is add Alternative Text.
Alternative Text describes your image
to people who cannot see it.
For example,
this can help visually impaired people,
who may be using screen readers
to understand what your text is about.
Alternative Text also helps search engine
spiders find your relevant content
and thus improve
the accessibility of your site.
Next, in the sidebar,
you can change the image size
by either choosing
a generic image size,
or by choosing the exact
image dimensions.
Yet another way to change the image
dimension is straight into the block.
Click on the image and you will see
blue dots appear on the edges.
Use the left mouse button
to click on a dot
and simply drag it to a size
that you find suitable.
Note that you will need to see
the cross arrow appear for this to work.
Let’s go back to the sidebar
and its settings.
Below the resizing settings
are the link settings.
They allow you to make
your image clickable,
and to choose what happens
when visitors click on it.
You will see an example of that
when we add an image from URL.
And back to the editor again.
Right now, we have the image
below the paragraph.
But, there are various alignment
manipulations that you can use.
For example, you can move the image
between the paragraph and the heading.
To do that, select the image,
hover the mouse
over the left side of the image,
until you see two arrows appear.
Click on the upward pointing arrow.
And you see that the image is now
between the title and the paragraph.
There are also other options
for aligning the image with the text.
I will click this one for example.
And then by clicking, holding and moving
the image with the blue dots,
I can change it to a size that I desire.
Ok, now we have the image
set in the text,
but there are other options
to edit it even more.
First, we can transform the image,
by clicking on the transform button here.
These are the options.
You can turn an image
into a downloadable file,
but that will make it go away
and in this case we don't want that.
We can add some more text
associated to the image,
and even choose to add a heading,
a list, or a paragraph.
This also does not seem suitable
for this kind of post.
I think the most interesting here,
and most relevant,
is the option to add a gallery.
So I click on it.
And now you see the new option here
to upload another image within this block.
I will upload one.
And you see now that the settings
in the sidebar are changed.
Currently, I have 2 columns, so 2 images
that I can add to the gallery.
But I can also add more columns
by changing the number here.
You can also choose to crop
the thumbnails, so they align,
and choose to link to them.
If you choose the option
Link to Media File,
the images will be clickable
and they will open in another screen.
I click Save Draft,
and Preview to see what
the gallery looks like.
You see it here, and I click
on the image, to open it.
Going back to the editing screen,
there is the option to transform
the image into a cover image.
I will choose that option.
And you see now that there is a possibility
to write text over the image.
Let’s write "Turkey top destinations".
And let's click on the arrow here
to move the image up.
Note that now there are options
in the sidebar that are, again, different.
Now, I can change the background,
the colors,
and the brightness
of this cover image.
So let me just adjust a few things.
Click Save Draft, and then Preview
to see what happened.
Here it is. The image is now
displayed as a cover.
I go back and you see here that in the menu,
there are three dots
that offer even more options available
for manipulating this block.
You can, for example,
duplicate this photo,
choose to add another block
before, or after it.
And you can also add it
to Reusable blocks.
If you have an image
that you use often,
click on the Add to reusable blocks.
Add a title.
And click Save.
You can now find your Reusable block
by clicking the plus icon,
scroll through the bottom
of the dropdown menu,
and click on the Reusable
block you created.
Finally, if you want to delete the block,
choose the Remove Block option.
As I mentioned previously, there are different
ways to add images with the block editor.
We already uploaded one, and the image we
uploaded went straight to our Media Library.
You can also directly upload files
in the Media Library,
like this.
Finally, there is also an option
to edit the image via the Media Library.
Just below the image and its details,
there is the Edit Image link.
Click on it and a new screen
in a new tab will open.
Here we can crop, rotate
and flip the image around.
We can also change
the dimensions, the name etc.
If you make any changes here, do not forget
to click Update in order for them to work.
Let’s go back to our post editor.
If you want to insert an image from
an external site, or from a URL,
without adding it to the Media Library,
you can do it
with the Insert from URL button.
Go to the image page source.
In this case I have found a page
with images from Turkey.
Right-click on the desired image,
and choose Copy Image URL.
Go back to the post editor,
simply paste the link
and click the enter button.
The image is now set.
Now, since we took this image
from a different site,
we want to make it clickable, and enable
visitors to access the original image source.
To do that, we go to the link settings,
then choose the Link to Custom URL.
And in the link URL box here
we paste the URL of the image source,
like this.
I will also choose to open the image
in a new tab, once it is clicked.
Let’s now click Save,
then Preview.
And here we see that the image
is clickable,
and if I click on it,
the source URL opens in a new tab
Let’s go back, and see one more
final option to add an image,
which is the drag and drop option.
You drag and drop an image
from your computer.
By first, locating the image
on the computer.
Left-click on it to select it.
And simply drag it
and drop it here, like this.
And there it is!
Those are the basics of what you can do
to add and edit images.
Previously, we saw
how to add images to a text.
But what about videos
or other types of content?
That’s also easy,
and to show you how,
I created this new heading
in our post here.
Videos can be added in two ways.
Either from your own library,
or, videos that you have made yourself.
Or you can also add videos
that you find on external sites.
Note that uploading videos to your directory,
especially big ones,
may slow down your site traffic and
cause issues for the user experience.
To save yourself this trouble,
you may want to consider
uploading your videos on YouTube,
or a similar platform,
and linking from there.
Let’s first see
how you can upload videos.
Click on the plus icon
to add a new type of block.
It may happen that you do not see
the video option among these first options.
If so, you can quickly search for it
in the search bar here, by typing - video.
And there it is.
Click on it.
And now there is a block
in the editing screen.
Similarly to the images,
you can Upload a video,
add it from the Media Library,
and insert it from a URL.
Click on the Upload button
to reveal the dialogue box
where you can search for your video.
Select it and click Open.
And the video is now in the post.
Let’s explore the options
in the sidebar.
You can choose to let the video
automatically play when the post is open.
But this is not something
that we would recommend.
You can choose for it to go in a loop,
that is to say to replay
every time it reaches the end.
You can also mute it, and allow
or disallow playback options
Which means that the visitors will be able
to rewind, forward, pause, play, etc.
Note that you cannot click on the video
here within the editor,
but only when you preview the post.
You can also choose an image
the video could start with.
Click on the option here, and choose
the image from the Media Library,
or upload a new one if you want to.
Let's click Save.
And check how the video
appears in the post.
Here it is, this is what your visitors
will be able to see and do with the video.
Let’s go back,
and see the remaining options.
We see that the options we have here
for the video are similar as for the images.
To quickly recap,
you can add a caption,
change the type of block, align the video
to fit the text as you want,
edit it, insert paragraphs or blocks,
reuse it or remove it.
Ok. Let’s see how to add
a video from URL now.
Let’s open another video box here.
For example, you can add
a video from YouTube
by simply copying and pasting
the link from a video.
Like this.
Alternatively, if you want to add
a video from another site,
you can use the Embeds
instead of videos.
Adding a video from YouTube is easy,
but it may be slightly
more complicated from other sites
For example, from TED.
Let’s press Enter here,
and click on the plus button,
where we can find the Embeds.
In the Embeds, you can see
the icons of the most popular websites
that you can embed content from.
For example, let’s see
how a TED video would be embedded.
Click on the TED icon.
I conveniently have
a TED page open here.
Now note, this is a whole page.
With a video, but also
all kinds of other content.
Yet, if I use the embed option,
the main video will automatically
be extracted and shown on my page.
I copy the link,
go back to the editor, paste it.
And there is it.
Now, the options for editing embedded
content in the sidebar are limited,
and I can only choose for the video
to automatically resize
in relation to the browser size
or the device my visitors are using.
Let’s save and preview
how this looks like on the site.
Here it is!
Just the video extracted
from the other content of the TED page.
Besides videos, we can also embed
other types of content like images, tweets,
as well as links to entire posts,
with previews.
So, I can embed a relevant Reddit post
within my own post,
by choosing Reddit
from the embeds menu
and just copying and pasting
the link to the post.
And it will appear in my post like this.
Again, with embeds of any type,
just like with the videos,
the option I have is to allow it to resize
when the browser is resized.
And that is it.
We have shown you how to add images,
videos and embeds to the posts.
And you are now ready
to do it yourself.
In this video, we will explore blocks.
We will continue
in the same post as before,
with the difference that I have removed
the other bonus content
to make space for the new one.
As already mentioned,
blocks can be various content elements
that you add to your posts and pages.
We already saw how to add text,
images, videos, and embeds.
Those are the most used blocks,
but there are more interesting
things you can add.
Let’s click on the + icon to see
what kind of other blocks there are.
The list is long, and to make things easier,
it is divided into different main headings.
First are the "Most used",
which show the block you use
most frequently, or most recently.
Under the "Common blocks" tab,
we see some familiar blocks,
such as the: paragraph, image, cover,
heading, gallery, and video.
We have not yet explored
the file, quote, list and audio.
Let’s go through them one by one.
First, we can add a file to a post.
For example, you may want
to add a downloadable PDF.
You can do that by clicking
on the "file block"
and the block
with the options will appear.
Just like with the other blocks,
you can upload, drag and drop,
or use the media library to add a file.
Let’s upload a PDF
by clicking the upload button,
and choosing a PDF document
from the computer.
The PDF file is now uploaded
as a clickable link
with the same title that
the PDF document has.
The options I have now in the sidebar
are to link to the media file
or an attachment page.
Choose the "link to media file" option,
if you want the visitors
to directly open or download the file,
by clicking on the file link
or the download button.
In the sidebar, we also have the option
to open the document in a new tab,
once a visitor clicks it, as well as the option
to hide the download button.
I will select
the "open in a new tab" option only.
Click save and then preview
to see what happens.
You can see that the link now appears here;
it is clickable and when clicked
it opens in a new tab,
while when the download button is clicked,
the document is downloaded.
Alternatively, you can choose
to "link to attachment page".
Let’s do it and click “preview”
to see what happens
now that we link
to the attachment page.
Here you see that clicking on the link,
first opens a new page
with a preview of the document.
Clicking on the document will only open it,
but not download it.
Ok, that was the "file block".
And let’s now move on
to the other common block,
which is the "quote block".
Use this block to add
some style to your quotes.
I will click on it.
And now I have the option
to add some text.
In this case, I have a quote
about Istanbul ready.
I will copy and paste it into the block.
I will click "save draft" and
"preview" to see what it looks like.
This is what the quote
appears like on the page.
The quote can either be regular,
like it is now.
Or large, like this.
In addition, there is one more option
to change the quote a bit more.
In the editor toolbar,
you can see the quote icon.
Click on it and choose
the "pullquote" option.
Now, you see that you can add
some lines around the quote,
and here, you can change the text color.
Or even add a solid color block
around the quote.
Let's go to the next common block,
which is the "list".
Just click on the "list block",
and you will see a bullet point
appear in the editor.
And now you can start typing the list.
If you want, you can change
the bullet points into numbers
by selecting the numbers option here.
Finally, in the common blocks tab,
is the "audio block".
You can see the options here are the same
as we saw with the other media types.
I will choose to upload a random audio file,
just to show you what it will look like.
And now you see, once I uploaded it,
a simple audio player is embedded.
The options in the sidebar are
to autoplay, loop, and preload.
There is no option to change
the look of this audio player.
Now you know the most common
and most useful blocks.
You can read and learn more about
all the blocks in the reading material
provided in this module.
So, I am sure you noticed that there are
plenty of ways you can edit, style
and enhance your text
with the block editor.
Go ahead and explore, experiment
and see what works for you.
Have fun!
Welcome back!
Now, you’ve just explored
some really useful blocks.
Then why another video?
Is there more to explore?
Yes, there is!
In this screencast, I would like to draw
your attention to one more block option,
and a very useful one: reusing blocks.
We mentioned it briefly
in a previous video.
If you create a new block,
you can also save it as a reusable block.
Just click the three dots
and then “Add to reusable blocks”.
Enter a name here.
And it’s always smart to think of a name
that helps you identify the block.
Especially when you’re planning
to save lots of reusable blocks.
Now, click Save.
If you want to use it again,
you can find it under the “Reusable” tab.
Now, why or when
would you reuse a block?
Well, for example, if you have a blog
and you want readers to follow you
on let’s say Twitter,
you could end your post
with an extra piece of text.
Something like this.
Let me just style it a bit.
You could use this end line
for almost any post.
Instead of typing it again
for every post,
you can make it a reusable block
and add it in one click.
Saves you a lot of time!
The same goes for call-to-action buttons,
like this one.
Buy our e-book!
Then, add a color.
And, add a link.
Now, you don’t want to style a button
over and over again.
And you don’t have to!
Just create it once
and then reuse it.
You could do the same for size tables
or feedback forms
or, whatever you think
is useful for your site.
OK, now, if you decide to
EDIT a reusable block -
and this is very important -
then this block will change
EVERYWHERE.
For example, if you change
the color of this reusable button,
it will turn into yellow
on all the pages where you’ve used it.
That will save you a lot of time!
But, sometimes you don’t want
all buttons to change.
Sometimes, you just want to change a color,
link or some words for one specific post.
And if that’s what you want,
then you should convert your
reusable block into a regular block.
BEFORE you edit it.
So, add a reusable block.
Click the three dots
and then click “Convert to regular block".
Once it is regular,
you can make your changes.
Now, the changes
will only apply to this block.
We’ve discussed the most important
information about reusable blocks so far.
But I would like to mention
one more thing.
You can manage all your
reusable blocks in one place.
Click the reusable tab.
And then click this link here.
Hey, this looks familiar.
It’s an overview.
Here you can edit
or delete your blocks.
And… you can export them.
If you have more than one
WordPress site,
you can use your reusable blocks
there as well.
Simply import your export file
by clicking this button.
You can now use your reusable block
on your other site as well.
Really cool, right?
In this screencast, we will explore the
functions that are available in the sidebar.
In the previous videos,
we frequently used the sidebar
to make adjustments
to the individual blocks.
But, note that the sidebar
actually has two tabs:
Block and Document.
So far, we used the Block tab
which was different for every block.
Let us now look
at the Document tab in the sidebar,
which contains settings
for the post as a whole.
The first tab is the Status & Visibility.
And the first thing you can do here is
determine the visibility of your post.
You can set the visibility
by clicking on the Public link.
It will open a fly-out menu with the options:
Public, Private and Password Protected.
Determine the visibility by
clicking on one of the options.
And finish the action by clicking
anywhere outside the menu.
Second, you can choose
when to Publish the post -
immediately or schedule
a different posting time and date.
To pick a posting time and date,
click on the link here.
A fly-out menu appears, where you can
insert the desired time and date.
Once you have
selected the date,
simply close the menu, by clicking
anywhere outside the menu.
The Stick to the top of the blog option
allows for the selected post
to appear first
even if you post other,
newer content after publishing it.
Note that if you select this,
you will be able to preview the change
only once you actually
publish the post.
So, I will select it now,
and we will see how it will be displayed
once the post is published.
The Pending Review option,
will mark the post as Pending,
instead of as Draft.
Note that if I select this option,
the Save link at the top
changes from Save Draft
to Save as Pending.
The Pending status will also appear
in the Posts overview,
as you can see if I go
to the Posts overview screen.
If you have more users of your page,
you will be able to choose
who the author of the post is
by clicking on this menu.
The final option
in the Status & Visibility tab
allows you to delete the draft
by clicking on the Move to trash button.
The next settings in the sidebar allow you
to view your previous revisions.
Click on it,
and a new screen will open.
At the center of the screen, you see
the before and after versions of the revision.
To view when a revision was made,
and by whom,
click and hold the arrows here,
while sliding the mouse left or right.
You see the different changes appear
at the breaking points of the slide bar.
To restore a previous version,
drag the arrow to the desired point
and then click
on the Restore this Revision button.
Moving on in the Sidebar,
next comes the Permalink tab.
In order to tell you about permalinks,
I will also use the Categories tab
here in the sidebar.
If you remember, we already picked
a basic URL structure for our posts,
which was the site name followed
by the category and then the post name.
You see here that we have
the basic structure set.
Since we do not have
any categories created,
the post is in the Uncategorized category.
We will tell you more about the theory and
practice of categories in the next module.
For now, instead of leaving
this post uncategorized,
we can actually quickly
create a category here, in the sidebar.
If you want to add a new category,
simply click on the Add New Category link.
Add the Category Name, and if necessary
assign a Parent Category.
Then click the Add New Category
button, and it’s done.
I will now select this category
for the post,
And click save.
And you now see that the category
is changed here in the permalink.
As previously mentioned,
the basic permalink structure,
in this case -
categories and post name
is something we will not change,
since it may lead to errors.
What we can change
is the last part of the URL
which is the post title.
The basic structure will stay the same.
Of course, we will still have
the countries followed by the post title.
However, we can make changes
to the post title itself.
For example, if the title
seems too long
we can shorten it
by removing some of the words.
Like this.
It is important to mention that once you
publish the post with this particular URL,
you should no longer change it.
If you do change it, the post
will be published on multiple pages,
which will lead to errors and consequences
for the findability of your post.
Ok, now that we saw
both Permalinks and Categories,
we can move on
to the next setting, Tags.
To add a tag simply type it
in the Add New Tag box.
Note that you need to press the Enter button
on your keyboard after each Tag you add
for it to be added.
In the next setting in the sidebar,
you can add a Featured Image to your post.
Click on the Set featured image button.
You can either upload a new photo,
or choose one from the Media Library.
I will choose this one
and click Select.
You now see the image in the sidebar.
To see what the image looks like in the post,
I will click on Save and then Preview.
And you see that the image
is automatically set
as a cover for this post.
Moving on, in the sidebar you can determine
the content of the post Excerpt.
This refers to the excerpt that will be shown
when your post appears in an RSS feed.
And, if your theme supports it,
it can also appear in other places
that allow quick summaries,
for example in the Category archives.
Finally, before publishing,
in the sidebar you can choose
to allow or disable comments,
or allow or disable
pingbacks and trackbacks
by leaving the box checked
or unchecking it.
If you're satisfied
with everything here,
it might be wise to first preview the post,
before publishing it.
And, once you are satisfied
with what you see in the preview,
you can move on and publish
by simply clicking the Publish button.
That will trigger
a new menu in the sidebar,
where you can once again check the visibility
and the time of publishing the post.
At the bottom, you can choose to always see
these checks, or skip them in the future.
All that is left now is to press
Publish and the post will be live.
Note that even though
your post is now on your site,
you can still make changes to it.
You can continue editing
as you did before,
and instead of saving the draft,
you will need to click Update.
Alternatively, if you want to temporarily
remove the post from your site,
click on Switch to Draft
which will remove the post
until you decide to publish it again.
Let's publish it back again.
And preview it.
And this is what
the post will look like.
Once I click to read it.
And if I click on the posts overview
I also see that it is featured.
And that a featured image
appears as a cover image.
There are a few more things to add
concerning the sidebar.
First, some plugins,
for example the Yoast plugin,
may also appear in the sidebar.
And, of course, depending on the plugin
the options that will appear will differ.
Secondly, so far we explored
the sidebar in the posts editing screen.
But, the sidebar also appears
in the pages editing screen.
Let’s see it, by clicking
on the pages menu item
and then click on a page.
You see that the options
are actually the same.
You have the sidebar divided
into the Document and Block tabs.
The blocks you can add to pages
are the same as the ones for posts.
The only difference is,
that in the Document tab of the sidebar,
there are slightly less options
compared to the posts.
And there is one different option,
here at the bottom
which is the Page Attributes
where you can assign a Parent Page.
We will tell you more
about parent pages in the next module.
So, that’s it about the sidebar.
You are now ready
to publish your first page or post.
In this lesson, we'll explore the various ways
of organizing your site within WordPress.
We'll discuss the ideal way
to structure your site,
your menus, your breadcrumbs
and lastly, categories and tags.
Now, let's take a look
at how you should organize your site
if you're starting from scratch
and could create an ideal situation.
Which, if you're taking this course,
may well be the case!
Yay, win for you, that saves you
a whole lot of trouble!
So, what does a well-organized website
look like?
We think it looks like a pyramid
with a number of levels.
Your homepage is all the way at the top,
where it's lonely.
Then you have some category pages
under the home page.
You should be able to file all of your content
under one of these categories.
If your site is larger,
you'll have some categories
that fall under these categories as well.
WordPress calls the main,
or top-level categories "parent categories".
Categories that fall under another category
are called a "child category".
For example, for yoast.com,
the pyramid would look like this:
our homepage at the top,
and the category pages
'Yoast SEO plugin', 'SEO courses',
'SEO blog' and 'Support' under it.
Almost everything we do can be filed
under one of these major categories.
These parent categories
have child categories.
The category page 'SEO blog',
for example,
has child categories for every SEO topic
we write about,
such as 'Analytics' for example.
Under these child categories,
there's a level with all the individual posts
we have on our website.
So in our case, there are four levels:
homepage, parent categories,
child categories
and then regular pages and posts.
So let's see how this works
for everydayimtravelling.com!
What might
our travel blog's pyramid look like?
Maybe something like this.
Again, the homepage is at the top,
and then we have to have category pages.
So what categories make sense?
We know we have several contributors
who travel all over the world.
So using the continents
might make sense in this case.
So we'd have a category for Europe, Africa,
South America, North America, Asia
and let's call it Australia and New Zealand,
because that's probably what people
will be looking for more than Oceania.
Of course, these main categories
can be divided into child categories as well.
We'll add child categories for the regions
our travel bloggers have visited.
For example, the category 'Asia'
includes the child categories 'Central Asia',
'East Asia', 'South Asia',
'Southeast Asia, and 'Western Asia'.
Now, if you want to add another layer,
you can make these categories parents
to even more specific categories.
So 'Southeast Asia' might be a parent
of 'Indonesia', for example.
'Asia' would be, in that case,
sort of a 'grandparent' to Indonesia.
Now, using continents as travel blog menu
items is just one possibility.
Other configurations
might make sense as well.
If our travel blog were less ambitious,
we might have just the countries
our authors have visited for child categories
and do away with the regions altogether.
We could also just as well put
all of these categories
under one big 'destinations' category,
and add 'accommodations',
'travel essentials' and 'reviews' categories.
It really depends on what you want to do,
what you want to focus on
and discuss on your site.
And how you can keep
your site well-balanced.
So you're going to have to think long
and hard about this
before you make any decisions
for your own site.
For this example, we'll stick
with the continents approach,
because our authors mostly write articles
that are centered around a destination.
We'll revisit the topic of categories
in the next video.
But first, let's explore the most important
part of organizing your site: the homepage.
It goes without saying
that your homepage should act
as a navigation hub for your visitors.
You should link to your most important
pages from your homepage.
By doing this, your visitors
are more likely to end up
on the pages you want them
to end up on.
As an added bonus, you show Google
that these pages are important as well.
Of course, if your site gets bigger,
you won't be able to link from the homepage
to all of your important pages.
At Yoast, we write about
six new articles a week
and we have about sixteen
important main articles.
We cannot link to all of them
from the homepage.
That would lead to clutter,
which makes it less likely your visitors
notice the pages you want them to visit.
In addition to having
a well-structured homepage,
it's also important to create
a clear navigation path on your entire site.
Your site-wide navigation
consists of two main elements:
the menu, and the breadcrumbs.
First of all, the menu.
The website menu is the most common aid
for navigation on your website
and you want to make
the best possible use of it.
Visitors use your menu
to find things on your website.
It helps them understand
the structure of your website.
That's why the main categories
on your site
should all have a place
in the menu on your homepage.
Furthermore, it's not always necessary
to put everything in just one menu.
If you have a big site with lots of categories,
this may clutter your website
and makes your main menu
a poor reflection of the rest of your site.
Where it makes sense, it's perfectly fine
to create a second menu,
like the one
the Manhattan College site uses.
On this site, the second menu links to pages
aimed at specific audiences.
But be careful, if there's no specific reason
on your site to implement a second menu,
one menu bar is better.
It maintains clarity and focus.
Finally, just like on your homepage,
don't add too many links to your menu.
The structure of your site
can be made even clearer
by adding breadcrumbs to your pages.
Breadcrumbs are usually visible
above the title of your post.
They are clickable links that look like this:
Home - Europe - Southern Europe - Italy.
Breadcrumbs improve both the user experience
as well as the SEO of your blog.
They show you how the current page fits
into the larger structure of your site.
Breadcrumbs allow your users
to easily navigate your site,
and it will help them to find their way
if they land directly on a page
at a lower level of your pyramid,
for example via Google.
Moreover, they allow search engines
to determine the structure
of your site more easily.
In addition to that, Google might use
breadcrumbs in the search results.
Unfortunately, WordPress doesn't offer
breadcrumbs functionality out of the box.
But adding breadcrumbs is quite easy:
if you use a WordPress site, you can use
one of the many breadcrumbs plugins.
So, now you should have a basic idea
of how to create the foundation
of a well-organized site.
In the next lesson, we'll explore
how to build on this foundation,
using categories and tags.
By now, you know
what a well-organized site looks like.
However, we have not yet discussed two
major factors in organizing your website:
categories and tags.
WordPress uses so-called
taxonomies to group content.
Now the word "taxonomy" is basically
a fancy term for a group of things
(like website pages, in this case)
that have something in common.
This is convenient, because people looking
for more information on the same topic
will be able to find
similar articles more easily.
And you can group content in different ways.
The default taxonomies in WordPress
are categories and tags.
You may have heard of them,
but are you using them right?
Let's take a look at categories.
Some things have something in common
because they can all be filed
under the same category.
Canada, the US and the Carribean
are all part of North America, for example.
Thus, they can be put
into the "North America" category.
"North America" is the overarching term,
the rest is all part of North America.
So there's always
a certain hierarchy to categories:
North America is at the top,
as the main term,
and the rest is merely one of the parts
that, together, make North America.
You should divide the blog posts
on your site into a number of categories.
If they grow too big, add child categories
to these categories, to clear things up again.
If you have a large blog category
like "North America" for example,
the US could be a child category,
under which you put all the different
travel posts about the US.
Again, there's still
a certain hierarchy here.
North America is still at the top,
but the US is now in the middle
rather than at the bottom of the food chain.
That place is now reserved
for the specific articles about the US
that fall under that category.
Adding this hierarchy
and categorizing your pages
helps your user and Google make sense
of every single page you write.
When implementing
your category structure,
make sure to add your main categories
to the main menu of your site.
On a side note, if you're working
with pages and not posts,
it works a little differently.
Posts work with categories
and tags whereas pages don't.
It's still possible to add
hierarchy to pages, though.
To do that, you assign a "parent" page
to a page in the sidebar.
By the way, there are also plugins that allow
you to add categories and tags to pages,
if that's what you prefer.
Back to creating categories, though.
How should you go about this?
It's very important that you don't create
too many categories,
or people won't be able to see
the wood for the trees.
It's difficult to pinpoint exactly
how many categories you should have.
A blog may have
a different number of categories
than an online shop with all kinds
of different products.
So consider what makes sense
for your situation
and don't let the number get out of hand.
Also, it's generally a good idea
to try to make sure
that your categories are roughly
the same size.
If one category becomes too large
because you have a lot of pages
about a certain topic,
you should divide that category
into two categories.
You can replace the large category
by two new ones at the same level, like this.
Or you can keep the large category and add
two new child categories below, like this.
A good rule of thumb
for the size of categories
is to make sure that no category is more
than twice the size of any other category.
It's all about keeping things clear
for your visitors and the search engine.
Once you're satisfied with your structure,
take a look at the names
you have come up with for your categories.
If you have enough content about a certain
subject for it to require its own category,
you can bet people
are searching for it as well.
That's why it's very wise to make sure
your category names resemble the search
terms people use to find something in Google.
Your site's structure
will also benefit from adding tags.
But what's the difference between
a category and a tag, you may think.
Well, the difference
has to do with structure
and the way you structure things.
As mentioned before,
categories are hierarchical:
you can have child categories, and even
child categories to child categories.
Tags, however, don't have that hierarchy.
Tags just say "Hey: this article
has a certain property
that might be interesting for a reader".
Readers can then use tags to find articles
that mention something they're looking for.
Let's go back to our travel blog
to illustrate this.
In addition to the categories on the site,
we've added tags like 'city trip', 'cuisine,
'budget', and 'active' to certain articles.
This makes - for example -
budget holidays easier to find
for people who are specifically
looking for cheap holidays,
because those holidays can be found
across several different categories
and the tags they tie them together.
You should limit
the number of tags you use.
If you add a new tag to every post or article,
you are not structuring anything.
Always make sure tags are used
more than once or twice on your site.
If tags are used only once,
the tag page will be exactly the same
as the blog post where you added the tag.
This may create duplicate or thin content,
and this is bad for your rankings.
In addition, make sure your tags group articles
that really have something in common.
Furthermore, always make sure your tags
are visible to your visitors somewhere,
preferably at the bottom of your article.
Tags are really useful for your visitors,
as they enable them
to read more about the same topic.
The last thing you need to be aware of
when creating categories and tags,
is that every time you create one,
you'll also create an archive page
on your website.
On this archive page, all the posts and pages
within a category or tag will be listed.
It's important to look at these archive pages
and optimize them if your theme allows you to,
because that can really improve
the way your users experience your site.
There are other archive pages
beside category and tag pages,
like author archives and date archives.
That's it for categories and tags!
Now, you should have a clear idea
of how you should organize your site
to make sure your visitors
reach the pages you want them to reach.
So far, we've discussed
why organizing your site is important.
Now, let’s see
how we actually do that.
Let’s start by adding
some categories to posts.
To do that, you hover over Posts
and then click Categories.
If you click it, you’ll land on a page
where you can create categories.
I have already added
a lot of categories here,
but there are still
a few more left to add.
I still need to create a category
for Australia and New Zealand.
So let’s start by writing
the name of the category.
I will use Australia and New Zealand,
instead of Oceania
and I will add the name right here.
Now, below the name,
you can enter a slug.
What you enter here is
how the category will show up
as part of your URL.
So if we enter australia-and-new-zealand
with hyphens in between, in lower case,
the URL for every post
in this category will be:
everydayimtravelling.com/australia-and-new-zealand
and then the post name.
Remember, we already
discussed editing permalinks.
Let’s quickly go back
to the permalinks screen,
which I have open here.
The slug I mentioned
will only work
if you’ve added the category value
in the permalink settings.
If you’re using the default settings,
the slug will not work.
Let's go back.
And we see here that under the slug,
there’s the parent category setting.
Because this page has no parent,
we’ll leave that untouched for now,
but we will see how to add
a parent category soon.
Below the Parent category
is the description.
The description may be shown on category
archive pages in certain themes.
But honestly, many themes
don't have this setting.
The default WordPress theme
we’re working with
in this course, for example, doesn’t.
Check for yourself what happens
when entering a description
and whether you will find it useful.
If you don’t,
you can just leave this field empty.
Now, when you’re done filling all this in,
you click Add New Category
and you will see the category show up
in the overview on the right.
Now, Australia and New Zealand
is one big category.
So let’s divide that
in two child categories.
We will add the child category
in the same way
as we did the parent category.
We add a name.
Australia, here,
the slug,
and here in Parent Category
we choose Australia and New Zealand
as the Parent Category.
And then we just click the Add button.
And you’ll see that
in the overview on the right,
Australia is filed
under Australia and New Zealand
with a line in front of the name
to indicate that it is part
of the parent category.
And I will go through the same steps
for New Zealand quickly.
Now, in the overview here,
there are also some other options.
If hover over a category
with the mouse,
you see that you can edit a category
by clicking the edit link.
And you’ll get the same menu
you see on the left,
just on a different screen.
Let's go back to the overview.
Where I will hover the mouse
once again to reveal the other options.
And I see that there is
also an option to Quick Edit.
And you see that I am now able
to change the name and the slug only.
You can also delete a category,
and if you click on the View link,
you will be taken
to the category archive page.
We will check that out a bit later.
Here, you can see the description and
the number of posts under a specific category.
If you find these distracting,
you can turn them off
using the screen options
at the top of the page right here.
And untick the boxes
of the options you don't want to see anymore.
In addition, if you’d like to convert
some of your categories to tags,
you can speed up this task using
a little tool if you click this link here.
Note that the page you land on
isn’t the tool.
You’ll first have to install
the converter here.
Once it’s installed, you can convert
categories to tags, and vice versa.
This may be handy, and a real time saver,
if you are revising your site structure,
and you think that some
of the categories you have
work better as tags,
or the other way around.
Let’s now move on to the tags page.
Here, there’s not really a lot to say.
It works quite the same as categories,
only you can’t assign parents tags
because tags are not hierarchical.
Let's add a new tag,
to see how it works.
For example, I add the tag Adventure.
I will add the name,
the slug,
and I will click here.
And the tag is now added,
and I can see it in the overview.
What’s left now, is to add
some posts to a category,
and to tag them with some tags.
We will do this by selecting
a post from the post screen,
and click on it.
And now, we will use the sidebar
at the right side of there screen.
Here we see
the Categories and Tags settings.
And I get an overview
of all the categories and tags I’ve set up.
Don’t forget, you can add posts
to multiple categories.
Istanbul, for example, is partly
located in Europe and Asia,
so any posts about it
should be added to both categories.
Plus Central and Eastern Europe.
Plus, Western Asia.
To confirm your settings,
it’s just a matter of ticking the boxes
and updating the post
at the top of the page.
Now, to organize your pages,
you need to do
something slightly different.
Let’s go to the pages screen
to see how that works.
I select a page.
And here, you also go to the sidebar,
but you won’t see categories and tags.
Here, you’ll just see the option
to assign a parent page
to the page you’re currently editing
under Page Attributes.
So simply select the page
you want the page you’re on to fall under,
and your hierarchy will be set!
As we mentioned
in the video,
you’ll also create an archive page
every time you create a category or tag,
and add posts to that category or tag.
On these archive pages, you’ll get an overview
of all the posts within that category or tag.
I will go back to the categories now
to show you this.
Here we are.
Now, check out this archive page, for example,
for the Central and Eastern Europe category.
In the standard Twenty Nineteen theme,
there’s really nothing you can do to optimize
these pages without diving into code.
In certain other themes, you can use
the description field we mentioned earlier
to spice up these pages.
By editing a category, you can customize
the text and add images and links, for example.
Some themes give you even more freedom
to customize archive pages.
So picking a theme that allows you to do
what you want to do is really key here.
Now, once you’ve got
your categories and tags set up,
I want to add some categories
in the site menu.
To do this, go to Appearance, then menus.
Here, you can create a menu.
The most intuitive way of doing it
is by clicking the “Manage with Live
Preview” option at the top of the page.
That will take us to the customizer that we
already discussed in a previous module.
In this screen it's very easy
to see what you’re doing.
If you don’t have any menus yet,
you’ll first have to create one,
give it a name,
and decide where it should appear.
We already have a menu here called Menu.
Now let’s add some menu items:
our most important categories.
I will click on Add items here.
As you can see, you can automatically select
between your pages, posts, categories and tags.
Let’s select some categories.
For example I will add Africa and Asia.
All I need to do is click on the cross here,
and the Category will be added.
You can also see how these appear in the menu
at the right side of the screen.
To save the category in the menu,
as it appears here, click Publish.
And it's done.
Now, you can create
additional menus as well.
What options are available to you
depends on your theme.
In Twenty Nineteen, you can add
a footer menu and a social links menu.
The footer menu
appears at the bottom,
and the social links menu appears
under the top menu by default.
In Twenty Seventeen, for example, you can
add a social links menu
that shows up at the bottom
of your site by default.
Below, you can tick a box
to make sure that new top-level pages
are automatically added to the menu.
This means that anytime
you create a page with no parent
(so that is not a child page
to another page),
it will show up in your menu.
I’d advise you to not tick this box and
add pages to the menu yourself
and in that way
you will have full control.
So we have reached
the end of this screencast.
In it, we went over how to add
categories and tags,
how to couple them with posts,
and how to add categories to a menu.
You can now get to work and
create your own website structure!
To manage your WordPress site,
especially when working with multiple users,
WordPress created a number of user roles.
Let's dive into these roles
and see what they can do for you.
In the first place, what are user roles?
Well, user roles determine
what people can do on your site.
Subscribers can only read things, whereas
Administrators can do almost anything.
More power also means more risks.
So, Administrators can do a lot of great
things, but they can also break stuff.
Keep that in mind,
when you add new users.
What do you want a new user to do?
Which user role will suit him best?
Currently, WordPress gives you
five predefined options to choose from.
You simply click the role you think is best
and WordPress takes care of the rest.
Now, let's first discuss the five different
user roles WordPress offers.
I'll come back to the practical part
of assigning roles to users
in the last part of this video.
Let's start with the most powerful role:
the Administrator.
If you've set up a WordPress site
for yourself or you're planning to do so,
this role will be given
to you automatically.
It gives you access
to all WordPress features,
like the ability to install or update plugins
or to add or remove users.
Most WordPress beginners
will have a single site installation.
However, there is one more user role
available for multisite installations.
That additional role
is called Super Admin.
You'll find more information
about multisite networks
and the Super Admin role
in the reading materials.
For our example site
Everydayimtravelling.com,
Nora Smith is the Admin.
She added her fellow bloggers Arya,
Benjamin, Daniel and Taylor as new users.
They are all assigned
to the role of Author.
This role is less powerful than the role
of Admin, but also more focused.
Authors can - what a surprise -
write and publish posts.
They can only edit, publish
and delete their own posts
and moderate comments
on their own posts.
In our example case,
that works just fine!
Our five authors all blog
about their own travel experiences.
Arya is not allowed to edit
or delete Daniel's posts,
but why would she want that anyway?
With regard to managing content,
Nora has more rights than the four others.
In contrast to her travel buddies,
she can edit, publish and delete posts
of every author.
In other words: she can take up
the role of Editor whenever she wants.
This role is included
in her role as Admin.
An Editor has all the rights to do things
that are related to content management.
For example, Editors can also write pages,
whereas Authors can only write posts.
However, Editors can't activate plugins,
create users or install themes,
as Admins can.
Let's continue with the last two
user roles WordPress offers.
Contributors can write, edit
and delete their own posts,
but they can't publish them -
as Authors can.
If many people write for one site,
you might want to have one central figure
that decides whether the content
is actually published.
The central figure should have
the role of Editor.
The rest of the team can deliver content
in the role of Contributor.
This "limitation" can also be useful
when you work with guest writers.
Or when someone other than the writer
needs to add tags or images
before the content goes live.
Contributors can't accidentally hit publish,
which makes it easier for Editors
to keep things under control.
By the way, it's important to note
that Contributors can't access
the Media Library to upload files,
whereas Authors can.
Finally, on the bottom of the WordPress
user role food chain, we find the Subscriber.
Subscribers can read your site,
post comments and create a profile.
But they can't write, edit or delete posts.
"So, what's the use of this user role?"
you might think.
Well, for people who add comments
to posts very often,
this makes things a lot easier,
because you don't have to enter
your details over and over again.
But you could also give Subscribers
access to specific content
that would be invisible to other people,
like a training.
Okay, so far we've discussed five
predefined user roles in WordPress:
the Administrator, or Super Admin,
the Editor, the Author,
the Contributor and the Subscriber.
In addition to these predefined roles,
developers can also create new roles.
We did that for our Yoast SEO plugin,
for instance.
So, don't panic when you find
more user roles in your WordPress install
than the ones we discussed in this video.
They have probably been added
by other plugins.
Now, let's get practical.
Where can you find these user roles
in the WordPress back end
and how can you change them?
Keep in mind that only Admin users
can add new users and assign user roles.
This is the back end
of Everydayimtravelling.
You can see that Nora Smith
is currently logged in as Administrator.
Now, click the menu item "Users"
in the admin menu.
Click "Add new user"
if that's what you want.
Fill in the fields and select
the user role down here.
You can also change the user role
directly in the user overview.
Or edit the user profile by clicking the name
and then changing the user role over here.
Don't forget to change the nickname too,
because it is set
to the username by default.
If you don't change it,
people will see your username under
the title of your post or in the sidebar.
And this makes it easier
to hack your account.
Finally, don't forget
to click "Update User".
That's it!
Thank you for watching and good luck
assigning roles to your users!
Updates. Everyone knows them
and most of us find them annoying.
We love to ignore updates
for as long as we can.
The same goes for making backups.
It's a hassle, and often an afterthought.
But how sensible is that really?
In this video, we'll explore three reasons
why updates are essential:
security, bug fixes, and new features.
We'll also tell you why and how to make
backups of your WordPress site.
But first, let's explore
the importance of updates.
When you click that update button,
you are adding the latest code
from the developer of the plugin
or theme that you are updating.
They usually update this code because
of a couple of different reasons.
The first one is security.
As WordPress powers more
than one-third of the web,
it also becomes interesting for hackers
to look for the security holes in WordPress
because, if they find weak spots
in the system,
it gives them the opportunity to attack
tens of millions of websites.
Hacks can help spread spam
or inject viruses.
This can obviously hurt you
in several ways.
Therefore, improving security
is by far the most important reason
to update your WordPress website.
By installing updates of WordPress core
files, plugins, and themes,
the security of your website
is often considerably improved.
Developers constantly try to adjust
the vulnerable parts of the code
to make them more secure
against external attacks.
So if you want to reduce the risk
of your website being hacked,
don't hesitate, just update.
The second reason to update often
has to do with so-called 'bug fixes'.
When developing software, it's almost
impossible to avoid errors creeping in.
Luckily, the WordPress community
is very active and alert.
If the community members spot errors
in the code, which are called bugs,
they report them to the developers.
The developers then try to fix these bugs,
which will lead to another update.
Bug fixes simply make sure
your product works better.
And lastly, updates unlock
new features for you.
Many developers are constantly working
on their products to improve them.
For example, the new block editor
in the latest versions of WordPress.
It's become a lot better and
easier to use with recent updates.
These new features are only available
to those who hit that Update button though.
You don't want to miss the boat
on cool stuff that benefits your site.
Unfortunately, updating WordPress,
themes, and plugins
is not always as simple
as just one click.
Most updates are fairly quick and successful
but something does go wrong now and then.
Parts of the website may
no longer work optimally,
content may look strange or even vanish,
and worst-case scenario:
entire websites may go completely blank.
You can minimize your risks by only using
high-quality plugins and themes,
but it is never entirely predictable
how a plugin interacts with a theme
or with another plugin.
And it can also be risky
to update old software
for which you've missed
a couple of updates,
which is actually a reason
to update regularly and frequently.
Therefore, before you update,
it's always wise to take a look
at what exactly is updated,
so you can test and
take this into account.
You can view this before installing an update
by clicking 'Details'.
Now, another thing
that's important to do regularly
is making a backup of your website
before updating.
If updates cause issues,
you can always revert
to an earlier version of your website.
Updates aren't the only reason
for backups.
You may also have problems
with your hosting provider, or get hacked.
When you do, it's useful,
to say the least,
to have an up-to-date backup
of your WordPress site.
You should always save this backup
in different places for extra security.
For example, you could save a copy
on the hard drive of your laptop
and save a copy
on your external hard drive as well.
Making a WordPress backup
is not complicated.
However, keep in mind that the process
consists of two separate parts.
A backup of the WordPress files
must be made
as well as a backup
of your WordPress database.
You can create backups either manually,
through your host,
or, and this is by far the easiest
and most convenient way,
by using a WordPress plugin.
We won't go into how
to create backups manually
since it's a little advanced
and the results will be the same
as backing up through your host or via plugin.
Let's first take a look at how to backup
your site through your host.
A good web host will allow you
to set automated backups
from within their control panel.
This is usually limited
to a backup once a day
for the low to medium tier
hosting packages.
There is also a wide range
of WordPress backup plugins.
For example, you have WordPress
database backup plugins.
Plugins that just backup your files
but also plugins that do both.
These backup plugins help you
to make a backup quick and easy.
Due to the wide range of possibilities
in the WordPress directory,
it is sometimes difficult
to make a choice.
Here are three
of the most well-known backup plugins.
The VaultPress service
was setup by Automattic,
the company behind WordPress.com.
With VaultPress, you can
arrange automatic backups.
VaultPress is now
part of the Jetpack plugin.
In addition to backups, VaultPress also
monitors the security of your website.
From the VaultPress control panel,
you can download backups or
restore them immediately.
The BlogVault service
is one of the best solutions
for creating and managing
backups in WordPress.
BlogVault also gives users
the option to choose real-time backups.
This is not necessary for most websites
but if you have an online shop
with many orders,
you want to be sure that you will not lose
any orders if you restore a backup.
BlogVault takes care of this.
UpdraftPlus is one of the most popular
backup plugins for WordPress.
In addition to the free version,
UpdraftPlus also offers two paid versions:
UpdraftPlus Premium
and UpdraftPlus Gold.
With those paid versions,
you can do more than just backups.
For example, you can also use the premium
versions to migrate your websites,
and these versions of the plugin
will automatically make a backup
before you install an update.
In addition, UpdraftPlus gives you
storage space
for the paid versions
in the Updraft Vault.
So, that's it for the theory.
In the upcoming screencast, we'll guide you
through the practical process
of making backups and doing updates.
In other words, we'll teach you
what you have to do for your own site.
In the previous video, you learned about
the importance of updating
and backing up your site regularly.
In this video we will explore some
of the ways you can backup your data
and perform updates in WordPress.
More precisely, we will show you
how to backup your site using plugins
and how to update your WordPress version,
your themes, and your plugins.
Note that we will not go over how
to backup your site through your host.
This is because backing up differs per host
so it is likely that the way we can
backup with our hosts
will not be the same as
you can do it with yours.
Another note before we go on:
so far we have been using a local test site,
which was not live
or it wasn't visible to the public.
However, to most effectively show you
how to do backups,
we will now be using another site,
which is a test site
but it is live and it is functioning.
Since it is a test site you may notice
some clutter here and there
but please pay no mind to that.
Okay, now that we have everything
out of the way, let's start.
We start with backups
because before doing any updates,
especially major ones,
like updating to a new version
of WordPress,
it is highly recommended
to do a backup first.
For the sake of time and convenience,
we will show you how to do backups
with two different plugins:
UpdraftPlus and BlogVault,
but be aware that these are not
the only plugins you can use
to back-up your site.
We have chosen these particular
two based on their popularity
and our own positive experience.
However, if you know of other plugins,
do feel free to use them.
First, we will see how to backup
a site with the UpdraftPlus plugin.
We already showed you how to find
and install plugins,
so we will go through this quickly.
To save time, I already installed
and activated the plugin.
Once activated, this particular plugin
creates a tab in the Settings menu item.
So let's go there.
You see the tab is created here,
and I will click on it.
Again, for the sake of time,
I already performed the backup,
but we can still check out
the options here.
In this screen, you can
choose to backup straightaway
by clicking the 'Backup Now' button,
but let's first see what else is there.
In the first tab, there is an overview
of the scheduled backups
as well as a list of existing backups.
To schedule a backup
and adjust the settings,
we need to go to the Settings tab.
I click on the tab
and we see that we can schedule backups
for files and database separately.
What's the difference between these two?
Well, files form the core of your site
and make sure everything works.
For example, files govern what happens
with the different WordPress features
in your back end
and with the plugins you have installed.
A database, on the other hand,
stores files associated to your site
in a structured manner.
The files stored in the database are,
for example,
a comment someone left on your site,
the time and date that comment
was published,
and the IP address of the commenter.
The information on your posts,
pages, categories, and tags
and how everything relates to each other
is also stored in the database.
To be safe and secure it is best to backup
both the files and the database.
The frequency of your backups
that you can set here
will depend on the type of site you have.
If you post regularly or if you have
an e-commerce site, for example,
it may be advisable to backup
very regularly.
Very regularly, as you can see
if you click the options here,
can mean as often
as every two hours.
If, on the other hand, you write posts
once a week or even less frequently,
you may choose to do backups
weekly or bi-weekly.
Here, you also choose
how many backups you want to save.
The number of backups you save
will depend on your needs
and how active your site is.
Now, where do these backups go?
In the case with this plugin,
the setting below lets you choose
where to store the backups.
Out of all these many options,
I chose Google Drive,
again out of convenience, since I already
had a readily available account.
Below this option, there is a list of things
you can choose from
and I will choose all of them
and then click save.
Now, if you also choose
to store your files in Google Drive,
You will first need to go through
an authentication process
and the plugin will guide you every step
of the way, so that will be easy.
Once you are done with that,
you can go back to the first step
and just click 'Backup Now'.
Once the backup is done,
you will get a message
that it was successful.
And you will be able to find
your files here in this screen.
Since I chose Google Drive,
if I go to my Google Drive,
I will see the backup files
are also available there.
Back to the backend, the options now
are to click on each of these buttons
and download the files to the computer.
This is recommended,
since in that way, you will have the files
stored in multiple locations.
The reason to save files
in multiple locations,
for example, your computer,
a hard drive, the cloud,
is to make sure that your backups
will remain accessible
if one of the locations
becomes corrupt or inaccessible.
There are some remaining options
in the plugin
that allow you to choose to restore
this version, delete it, and view a log.
So, that was the basis of what you can do
with this particular plugin.
I will stop here because,
as I mentioned,
this is not an advertisement
but an illustration
of how one particular plugin
can help you backup your site easily.
Another widely used plugin that provides
backups is the BlogVault.
As with the previous plugin,
I have also already installed
and activated this one.
I can find this plugin in the admin menu,
and I will click on it.
Now you see here, I already provided
an account and linked it with the site.
When you provide the account,
you will see a drop-down menu,
where you will be able to choose
to back-up your site.
It is all very simple and you will
just need to give an email address
and go through a few easy steps.
Since already connected the account,
we can go straight
to the BlogVault dashboard.
We have mentioned this
before a lot of times:
how things appear differ per plugin
and here you see a living proof.
While with the first plugin,
we did the backup with the backend
in the settings menu,
with this one, we need to go to an external
site to access the plugin dashboard.
And what we see here is, in fact,
the BlogVault dashboard
where we see
an overview of the website.
The first box here shows the backups
which is what we will focus on.
I will click on the backups number.
A new screen opens with details
about the backup
and here we see that actually there is
a backup currently in progress
and the option in the right corner here
allows you to migrate the files,
upload them to Dropbox, download them,
and test the backup.
Finally, you can choose
when the next backup should be performed
with the sync options.
So that's it for the backups,
it's pretty simple really, if you use a plugin.
Now that we saw how we can back-up a site
with some plugins,
let's check out the updates.
WordPress does quite a good job at making
sure to remind you of any available updates.
If a new version of WordPress is available,
you will usually be notified right here
in the dashboard.
When you have the dashboard open,
you can also see the notifications
in the Updates tab,
right here, in the admin menu.
Let's click on that and see what's there.
First, you see the most critical issues
WordPress wants to draw your attention to.
There is also a reminder by WordPress
that it is best to do backups
before moving on to updating.
We already did that, so we should be fine.
You see here, there is also a button
to check for available updates.
WordPress does it automatically
but if you want you can do it manually
by clicking this button.
Now, the available updates are listed
under different headings.
You can update WordPress,
as well as plugins, and themes.
We see here that actually
all our plugins are up to date
so we will update only the themes.
But it actually works the same
so there is no problem there.
I will click 'Select All'
and click 'Update Themes'.
I will be taken to a new screen
where I will be able to see
the progress of my updates
and once the update is done I will go back
to the updates screen.
Okay, we have the plugins
and themes updated.
Let's just update WordPress now
and we are done.
All we have to do
is click the 'Update Now' button
and we will be informed
that the update is done
and in this case we also see
that a database update is also required.
So let's just click that as well,
and that is done,
and now we can go back,
and that is it actually.
Now it may happen that you will run
into errors or issues
when doing backups and updates.
One way to control
what is happening on your site
is to go to the Tools menu item
in the admin menu,
then click on the 'Site Health' tab.
You can see any issues
that have been detected
and if you need to do
something about it.
We will go into more detail about this
in the reading materials.
In addition to the Site Health,
you can also install a plugin called
Health Check and Troubleshooting.
We will also see a bit more about this
in the reading materials.
Finally, yet another way to make sure
things will not go south,
is to first deactivate your plugins
before updating WordPress.
Of course, all of these things are optional
and it is your responsibility to decide
what you will do with your site.
So that is it!
In this screencast, we saw how to back-up
your site with two different plugins
and how to update
WordPress plugins and themes.
Hopefully, you noticed
that it was not very hard
so we do encourage you to regularly update
and backup your site and keep it safe.
In this video, I will take you
through some common mistakes.
So, you've got your site up and running.
You know how to create content
and keep your site up to date.
You've got backups sorted
and that's great!
Because that's one
of the most commonly made mistakes.
Here are a couple more common mistakes
you should avoid.
As we've learned in a previous lesson,
it's good to think about your permalinks
before you actually start using WordPress.
Permalinks, the name kind of says it,
are meant to be permanent.
So, once you've set them,
you really shouldn't change them again.
If you DO decide to change them,
the URL of your posts will change.
This means search engines
can no longer find your posts
as they've indexed the old permalink.
Visitors coming to your site
via search engines will end up on your site
with an error message
saying the post could not be found.
The infamous 404 error message.
Between WordPress,
all the plugins and themes,
it can be hard to keep track
of all the updates a site needs.
Especially if everything
is working smoothly.
It can be even harder
to see the immediate value
in taking the time
to process those updates.
But keeping plugins, and themes,
and WordPress itself updated
is one of the most important tasks
you have as a site owner.
Updates not only bring new features,
but oftentimes fix bugs and security issues.
Last thing you want to see happen
is end up with a hacked site, right?
We've talked about what plugins are
and what they can do.
And with more than 50 thousand plugins
available in the WordPress repository,
you have a lot of options
to choose from.
Which makes it very tempting
to install a plugin
for every little thing you can think of.
But that doesn't come without a cost.
Not only will you have to keep
all these plugins up to date
whenever there are updates,
but there are other risks as well.
You may end up with a slow site.
Too many plugins doing fancy stuff
can possibly slow your site down.
So, evaluate carefully
before you install a new plugin.
We've talked about where to get
a theme for your site.
Chances are you've found one
that fits your needs.
You've installed it, but after a little while,
you realize you want to change a few things.
And you can!
But, before you dive
into how to change your theme,
you should create a child theme
and make your changes in the child theme.
By doing this, you'll be sure that when
your initial theme sees some updates,
you won't lose all your modifications.
By the way, there's a big chance
you only want to do some CSS changes
and the Customizer
should suffice for this.
CSS is a markup language that's used
to design what a website looks like.
That's also a future proof way
to change things about your theme.
One of the most common mistakes we see
is once you have your site up and running,
you may want to delete posts or pages.
They may no longer serve
the purpose they used to serve.
And it makes good sense
to remove those.
However, since the search engines
have indexed your site,
deleted content on your site will render
the infamous 404 pages: page not found.
Our Yoast SEO Premium plugin
solves this for you.
When you first install WordPress,
WordPress will create a Sample Page
and a Hello World post for you.
Make sure you delete the default
Sample Page via the pages menu
and the Hello World post
via the posts menu.
Okay, that's it for this lesson.
In the next lesson, we'll dive
a little deeper into the world of security.
We've arrived at the last lesson 
of this module.
In this lesson, we're going to talk 
about WordPress security.
As is stated on the WordPress website,
security in WordPress is taken very seriously,
but as with any other system, there are
potential security issues that may arise,
if some basic security precautions
aren't taken.
What does this mean?
Well, basically, if you don't want 
your site to get hacked,
you should improve the security
of your WordPress site.
If your security isn't up to par,
it's easier for hackers to steal
your user information, passwords,
install malicious software,
and even distribute malware to your users.
We're assuming 
this isn't something you'd want.
That's why in this lesson, 
we'll enumerate some suggestions
on how to improve security
on your WordPress site.
Please make sure to backup your site
before trying any of the methods
we'll discuss in this lesson.
Since we don't know 
how your site is built,
we're not sure 
how it will respond to these tips.
The most important thing
for WordPress security
is to make sure everything on your site
is updated to the latest version:
your WordPress core installation,
your themes, your plugins.
If you make sure they're all
up-to-date on a daily basis,
you'll reduce security risks tremendously.
A recent study shows that a very large
percentage of all website hacks
came from out-of-date,
vulnerable versions of plugins.
so it's crucial to update all of your themes,
plugins, and your WordPress core installation
when there are new and
improved versions available.
Make sure you always keep your plugins,
your themes,
and WordPress itself up-to-date.
Always.
What's also very important... your password.
Make sure your password is hard to guess.
1 2 3 4 5 6 isn't a password,
and even Star Wars made the list
of most used passwords.
Remember, you're not as unique
as you think you are.
An easy thing to remember is,
make sure your password is CLU:
complex long and unique.
But even then, coming up with a difficult
password usually just isn't enough.
Computers are trained to guest passwords
and passwords that are hard 
for humans to remember
are usually easy for computers to guess.
Most "strong passwords" that humans
come up with, have the same structure.
They start with a capital;
some letters are substituted for numbers:
"a 4 instead of an a anyone?"
and they usually end with a punctuation mark
and/or a number.
Therefore, we strongly recommend
using a password management tool.
Password managers basically
do two important things:
1. They generate super strong, unique,
long, and random passwords for you,
so you don't have to come up
with them yourself
2. They store and manage these
passwords for all your online accounts
in an encrypted format.
It's much safer to use a randomly
generated password
instead of a human generated one.
And with a password manager you don't have 
to worry about remembering them.
Password managers we recommend are:
1Password and LastPass.
Another way to reduce the risk 
of hackers getting into your site
is by using two-factor authentication,
also abbreviated with 2FA.
The essence of two-factor authentication
is exactly as implied in the name:
two forms of authentication.
It's not enough to just enter
your username and password.
You'll also have to enter a code, 
usually generated by an app on your phone.
Google Authenticator and Authy
are the most used apps for this,
but this is also included in 1Password,
one of the password managers we mentioned.
There are other forms 
of authentication factors as well,
like fingerprints, your eyes iris, 
voice, etc.
What also makes your WordPress site
more secure is using a secure connection.
How? Well, you should make sure
your site uses HTTPS instead of HTTP.
When you type in a URL in the search bar,
your browser tries to connect with it.
With an HTTP connection
this is all done in plain sight,
and there's no encryption to be seen.
So, every time you log in to a site
that you connect to via an HTTP connection,
the data you enter - your username,
your password - is sent in plain text.
Trust me, that's really bad.
HTTPS secures this process.
It encrypts the connection between
the browser and the site,
therefore, making sure that no one can
intercept data sent between those two.
So if your site is still on HTTP,
you should make sure you switch to HTTPS.
We've explained more on how to go
about this in the reading materials.
Moreover, make sure your site is hosted
by a hosting company that cares
about your site's security.
Check if they have support 
to help you out with a hacked site.
Check if they offer backups,
redundant firewalls,
malware scanning, 
and DDoS attack protection.
A DDoS attack is an attempt
to make a website unavailable
by overwhelming it with traffic
from multiple sources.
Our lists of WordPress hosts 
on yoast.com/wordpress-hosting/
should be your go to list.
All the hosts listed on this page, get our seal
of approval when it comes to security.
Also, it's really important to create 
regular backups of your site.
Then, in the unfortunate event
that your site gets hacked,
you will at least have the data,
so you can quickly restore your site.
And again, we really 
can't stress this enough:
Make sure you keep everything
on your site up-to-date.
OK, time to wrap things up.
In this lesson, we've listed 
the most important and basic tips
for improving security 
on your WordPress site.
Please be aware that this
is not a complete list.
There are a lot more things you could do
to improve your site security.
We've listed more tips 
in the reading materials,
as well as links to useful sites and articles
about WordPress security.
In the previous modules, we showed you
how to create a great site with WordPress.
But creating a great site isn't enough.
You want people
to actually visit it as well.
Unfortunately, just having a good site
isn't enough to make that happen.
And that's where
the real challenge begins.
Of course, our travel bloggers can ask their
friends and family to check out their site.
They'll say it's very cool
and that's awesome,
but this is an international travel blog
we're talking about.
Our bloggers, and we assume
the same applies to you,
are going to want to make sure
that they have some traffic coming in
from other sources as well.
But how?
Creating a WordPress site is only
the first step on your way to stardom -
for the other steps,
you need to work on your SEO.
Before we start giving you tips,
let's first take a look at what SEO actually is
and why you should work on it.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
It is the process
of improving websites and content
to get more traffic from search engines.
SEO has an on-page part
and an off-page part.
On-page SEO is everything you do
on your site itself to make it better.
It consists of a technical part,
as well as a content part.
Both have to be awesome for you to have
a chance of doing well in the search results.
Off-page SEO encompasses 
everything you do outside of your site
to get people to visit it, like social media
or organizing events.
Working on your SEO
means improving the chance your site
will be the one people will actually visit.
When you visit the WordPress homepage,
you'll notice it has an illustration
saying the CMS is SEO-friendly.
That's true, by installing WordPress you get
a pretty good experience out of the box.
A lot of basics are handled well
by WordPress.
But it would be a mistake to think
that you're ready to rank
after installing WordPress.
In this module, we'll show you
how to avoid this trap.
We'll first tell you
what WordPress does for you.
We'll also explore how Yoast SEO can help,
and what you have to do yourself.
So, what does WordPress do
out of the box?
WordPress helps you get going quickly
and it's a pretty solid platform to work on.
Among other things,
it supports so-called pretty permalinks
so you can use SEO-friendly URLs
like this one rather than this one.
We've shown you how to do this
earlier in the course.
WordPress also supports the title tag.
This makes sure that the title you entered
is also rendered in the code,
so the search engines know exactly where
to find the all-important title of your post.
Also, WordPress automatically deals
with duplicate content on some pages.
By that, we mean that you sometimes show
the same content on different URLs.
Let's consider an example.
Say you sell products
in different colors and sizes.
You have a different URL
for each product variation,
but the description of the product
stays the same.
This may seem harmless,
but as a matter of fact, 
it can really hurt your rankings,
because duplicate content confuses Google.
WordPress solves this for some pages
by adding a so-called canonical link,
showing that one version of the page
is the one you want to show
in the search engines.
It doesn't do this for all pages, however,
but we'll get back to that in the next video.
Out of the box, WordPress also redirects
posts whenever you change their titles,
which is very convenient.
Imagine if you decide you don't like
the way you've framed your post,
rewrite it and then still have
the old URL,
which doesn't fit the contents
of your post anymore!
It would be very confusing for visitors
and search engines alike.
And lastly, a recent addition
is the Health Check dashboard
that shows you how your site is doing
in a technical sense.
But even with the things
WordPress does automatically
when it comes to SEO,
WordPress still needs help.
Now, it is possible to optimize
your site all by yourself,
but we wouldn't recommend that.
It would take ages
and you'd really have to know your stuff.
There are tons
of WordPress SEO plugins out there
that can help you take care of the most
important improvements, like Yoast SEO.
And of course, you need to do
some things yourself.
In the next two videos,
we'll explore exactly that.
In the previous video
we showed you some things
that WordPress does for your SEO
out of the box.
But WordPress still leaves
a lot of things to be done
if you want your site
to rank high in the search engines.
Some of these things,
you'll have to do yourself.
Other things, Yoast SEO can do for you
or help you with.
In this video, we'll explore how you can use
Yoast SEO to improve your SEO.
Let's start with what
we're most well-known for:
our green, orange
and red bullets feedback.
The feedback helps you
optimize your post
for all kinds of SEO
and writing best practices.
If you're writing a post, for example,
it's smart to think about the search term,
or search terms, you want that post
to be found for.
That's called your keyphrase.
We help you check whether your text
is well-optimized for your keyphrase.
Let's see how this works.
If you use our plugin,
you will find Yoast SEO here.
After you enter your keyphrase,
we run a check on your content.
We check for example how often
you've used your keyphrases,
and whether you've used them
in the right spots.
The feedback that comes
with the bullets
tells you exactly 
HOW you can improve your post.
In the free plugin, you can optimize
for ONE focus keyphrase.
In Yoast SEO Premium, you can optimize
for synonyms and related keyphrases as well.
Another cool feature of Yoast SEO Premium
is that it recognizes different word forms.
If you optimize for the keyphrase
"buy ballet shoes boy", for example,
it will also recognize
"buying ballet shoes boys".
This includes singulars, plurals, possessives,
comparatives, and different tenses.
This means you can use different forms
of your focus keyphrase,
and the analysis will still be able
to recognize them.
We also check your text for readability.
Readability is very important for SEO,
and for a successful website in general.
Online writing has to grab the attention
of the reader and keep it.
Our readability analysis gives you feedback
on how to make your copy
as clear and easy to read as possible.
Let's move on to another very convenient
tool: the Yoast SEO snippet editor.
Thanks to this tool, you can see your
content through the eyes of the searcher:
what should your post or page look like
in the search results?
Here, you can present Google
with a suggestion
of what your search result
should look like.
Mind you, Google doesn't always copy
your suggestions,
but you can optimize 
your chances right here.
Finally, I want to mention
three more features of Yoast SEO
that take away the stress
of technical optimization from you.
We've already mentioned
that WordPress takes care of canonical links
on some of your pages.
Yoast SEO takes it a step further
and solves canonical for all your pages.
Moreover, it allows you to indicate
whether you want to canonicalize
very similar posts or pages,
so the search engines will never be confused
in case of duplicate or similar content.
In that way, Yoast SEO makes sure
that your content is always found
under the URL 
you want it to be found under.
We also add structured data 
to your pages.
This code contains all kinds of information
about your page
and makes it easier for Google
to understand who you are,
and what your website
and individual pages are about.
This allows Google to make sense
of your page
and maybe even show rich results
for your pages,
which really stand out
from other results!
Last but not least, Yoast SEO rolls out
the red carpet for the search bots,
making it super easy to crawl your site
and find everything.
And, equally important,
making sure the pages you don't want
to show up in the search results
are kept away from Google.
In the paid version of our plugin,
there are even more features.
They're mainly time-savers
and things that make your life easier.
Which starts with 24/7 support,
but includes convenient stuff
like internal linking suggestions,
which really help you organize your site
quickly and intuitively.
Then there's social previews, which help
you manage what your posts will look like
on social media like Twitter and Facebook.
And our Redirects functionality
helps you shore up your site
if you want to delete or redirect pages.
Now, there's lots more to tell
about our Premium plugin,
but that's not what you got
this course for.
The main thing to take away here,
is that there are lots of SEO things
you don't want or need to think about.
Then again, there are some things
that only you can do,
and that you absolutely need to think about
when trying to create a successful website.
We're going to explore those
in the next video.
In the previous videos, we showed you
how WordPress and Yoast SEO
can kickstart your SEO.
Our plugin takes care of a lot of things
and it will make your life easier.
But our plugin can't do
your SEO for you completely.
Creating content, obviously, is something
that you will have to do for yourself.
Of course, you can outsource it,
but it remains a task 
that requires human effort.
So, in this video, I'm going to tell you
what you need to do for yourself
to make your SEO strategy successful.
So let's start 
with a little low-hanging fruit.
What are the simple things you can do
to get quick results?
Well, first of all, if you decide
to install Yoast SEO,
you need to configure the plugin
in the right way.
Our configuration wizard helps you
to easily configure your site
to have the optimal SEO settings.
Just answer the questions in the wizard
and we'll implement the right settings
for your website.
This is really important
because optimal plugin results
require an optimal configuration.
That makes sense, right?
But let's go beyond the plugin.
Even if you decide not to use it,
there are lots of things
you can work on yourself.
For instance, you can start by choosing
a good, lightweight, responsive theme
that works well on all devices
and doesn't come
with a million features you won't use.
To make your site faster,
you can install a caching plugin
and maybe invest
in a good content delivery network, a CDN.
These tools help you get your content
to your readers faster.
And you have to think carefully about
what kinds of content you add as well.
Adding images to your posts and pages,
for example, makes your content come alive.
But more often than not,
these images turn out to be way too big.
You need to optimize them.
You can do this by hand, but that's a lot
of work if you have a site full of them.
It's better to install
an image optimization plugin
that helps you do this automatically
every time you upload a picture.
Remember, and we have said this before,
be careful not to add too much.
Sometimes, site owners install dozens
of plugins for everything under the sun.
This can really slow down your site
and maybe even pose a security risk
when one of these plugins gets hacked.
Only install plugins that you actually use.
And in addition, please make sure
to always back up your site.
We can't stress this enough.
Now, let's get to the bigger stuff.
Some of the things you do
to optimize your website
simply require 
a lot of work and thinking.
One of the most important examples
is keyword research.
It's a vital element 
of your SEO strategy.
Keyword research is a process
where you try to determine
the search terms you want to be found for.
You need to ask yourself several questions:
What audience am I trying to reach?
What search terms do these people use?
After all, what's the use of optimizing
your page for a term nobody uses?
In other words: what's the use
of ranking number one for [passerine]
when your target audience
mainly searches for [songbird]?
And there's another factor you should take
into account as well: your competition.
Google the keyphrase you want
to optimize your page for.
And then check how many companies
are trying to rank for the same term.
How big are these companies?
Would your own site fit
between these results?
As we've mentioned before, you're going
to have to write some awesome content.
Yes, our plugin gives you feedback
on your writing
to make sure that it's readable
and SEO friendly.
But still, YOU have to write it.
And there are some things
that an automated program
simply cannot accurately spot,
like whether your writing style
is engaging and fun to read.
Another thing no plugin can do for you,
is setting up and maintaining
your site structure.
This includes organizing
your homepage and your menu;
creating categories and tags,
but also setting up
a good internal linking structure.
We've talked about this before,
but it's especially important for SEO.
Without a decent site structure,
both your visitors and Google will get lost.
And that's not only a waste of your efforts,
but it can also be bad for your rankings.
It works similarly
for social previews and redirects.
Our Premium plugin will help you to create
great posts on Facebook and Twitter,
but still they need to be written.
And our redirect manager will stop you
from just deleting posts,
but it remains YOUR job
to determine to which new post
you should redirect the old one.
Whenever there are choices to be made,
it's up to you to make the decisions.
OK, let's sum things up.
The most important things that Yoast SEO
can't do for you are keyword research,
writing content and setting up
the structure of your site.
Our plugin offers tools and feedback
to make it easier for you to work on your SEO.
But still, there's a lot to be done.
It takes effort and it takes time.
So, don't despair
if you're not ranking overnight.
If you're just starting out,
you're probably not the best result YET.
Or maybe your rankings suffer,
because the competition is very stiff.
That doesn't have to mean
that your page isn't valuable.
Maybe it will just take some time.
On the other hand, maybe you just need
to put in more work
into becoming the best result.
In any case, put in effort
and make sure your website offers
the greatest experience for your users.
If you do that,
you should be on the right track.
So, good luck!
Hi! In the previous modules,
we told you how you can use WordPress.
So now you should be ready
to start building your site.
But before you do, in this module, we want
to tell you more about WordPress.
We'll tell you how it all began and how
its community helped it thrive and grow.
In this video, I will take you
on a quick tour of WordPress's evolution.
We will see how, over time,
a 19-year-old blogger's attempt
to improve his own blogging experience
turned into the most used CMS
in the world.
But, this is not just a story
about one man's success.
It is a story about how cooperation
and a community effort
can lead to creating great things.
So, let's begin.
It all started back in 2003.
Matt Mullenweg liked taking photos
and sharing them online.
He used an open-source blogging platform
that was popular back then,
called b2/cafelog.
At that point, Matt was already blogging
for some time.
His blog was getting attention,
and visits were increasing.
But there was a problem.
The developer stopped updating b2/cafelog
and he could not be reached.
Matt was a blogger, so the first natural
thing that came to him was to blog about it.
In the historical post
"Blogging software dilemma,"
he wrote that he was considering
taking matters into his own hands
and using the b2/cafelog code
to "fork" the software.
I know what you may be thinking now.
What is this software forking business?
Let's pause the story for a second
and see what it means.
Software can be divided into branches
that stem from the same root,
but go their separate ways,
like a fork in the road.
In open-source software,
developers can take source code, copy it,
and create a totally different
piece of software.
That is how WordPress came to be,
as a fork of b2/cafelog.
OK, back to the story.
Mike Little, a developer,
noticed Matt's post
and commented that he would like
to jump in on his idea of forking b2.
And that was it.
That is how the two began writing
the first page of WordPress history.
Of course, WordPress did not magically
become the CMS we know and love today.
It went through a really massive evolution
over the years.
To give you an idea of just how massive
these changes were,
let's take a look at the most prominent
WordPress versions and how they evolved.
Note that we mention
the most significant changes,
but each version came
with many more different features
that we just don't have the time
to name here.
Our journey begins
with WordPress version 0.7.
What you see here is what WordPress
looked like at the beginning.
Looks quite... different, don't you think?
Back in that first version, there was not
much you could do besides blog.
There was not even
a dashboard in this version.
Basically, all you could do was write a post,
set its visibility and comment options,
and put it in a single category.
You could not even view your posts
in the front end at this point.
Now, we all have our reasons
why we love WordPress.
But, almost everyone agrees that features
such as plugins, widgets, and themes
are what makes it so cool.
So where are they
in this evolutionary timeline?
Plugins made their appearance
(as we know them today)
almost a full year
after the launch of WordPress.
The version 1.2., that introduced
a robust plugins system, was called Mingus,
after Charles Mingus, the American jazz
bassist, pianist, and composer.
Fun fact: Matt studied jazz,
and he is a passionate jazz fan
(and so are many 
other core contributors).
So, (almost) each WordPress version
is named after a jazz legend.
It took another year, and a few updates,
for the plugin repository
to be created in version 1.5.
This version also brought an improved
and extended themes system,
and it introduced the Dashboard.
Still, the look of WordPress was quite far
from what we know today.
The first significant redesign of the back end
User Interface came with version 2.0,
named after Duke Ellington, in 2005.
In the two years that followed, the updates
focused on fixing bugs and security issues.
In the 2.2 version of 2007,
which is around the time I started
to contribute to WordPress myself,
WordPress got its widgets.
It's successor, 
version 2.3. (called Dexter)
made it possible to add tags to posts.
So, you see by now that changes were
happening slowly and systematically,
and they were no longer based only
on the needs of a couple of individuals.
A community with ideas and a willingness
to dedicate time to WordPress was forming.
In 2008, WordPress got some heavy
make-up on the user interface,
and it began to look more
like its present version.
In 2008, the new release 2.7
(called Coltrane)
introduced an admin menu
that resembles the one we have today.
This version was a great departure from
the first version that appeared in 2003.
All this change, the multiple improvements,
and updates would not have been possible
without the growing community.
In 2010, 218 contributors
worked on Version 3.0,
which was a great turning point
in WordPress history.
Version 3.0 brought custom post types
and custom taxonomies.
By this point, it was undeniable
that WordPress had grown out
of its blogging platform origins,
and it was morphing
into a powerful CMS.
It was also around this time
that WordPress got a mobile app
for on-the-go posting and editing.
We fast forward to 2013
when the 3.8 Parker version
brought a brand new design.
And if you look at this screenshot,
you can probably already see glimpses
of the latest, current version.
In the years that followed, dedicated
WordPress developers worked tirelessly
on major and minor improvements
to the user experience and security.
Recently, the release of WordPress 5.0
shook up the WordPress world.
Why was that?
Because the new block editor replaced
the beloved classic editor
you wrote posts and pages in.
If you are new to WordPress, 
the classic editor will not mean much to you.
But for people who have been with it
from the start, it was a dramatic change.
So what was 
the famous classic editor like?
It was actually much like Microsoft Word,
or another word processing software.
And, that made it kind of easy to use
due to its familiar functionalities.
But it also came
with some of the frustrations
you see in the word processing
software world.
Have you ever tried to align images
and text to appear side by side
and repeatedly failed
until you gave up in frustration?
Well, that would happen
in the classic editor as well.
If you wanted to add a button in the classic
editor, you would need to use some code.
If you need a table,
you'd need to get a plugin.
With the new block editor,
also known as Gutenberg,
you can do everything with blocks.
You need text and image side by side?
No problem, use the Media and text block.
You want to add a table or a button?
Sure, no sweat, 
use the button or table blocks!
Each content element has its own block,
and it makes the editing
of the content super easy.
If you followed our course,
I am sure you saw how easy it is
to create content with the block editor.
Even more exciting
is that the Gutenberg block editor
is just the start
of a much grander project.
The next big change
should affect page templates
and in the final stage, WordPress
will become a full site customizer.
So the future shines bright for WordPress
as new features appear on the horizon.
When you look back at how WordPress
started and what it has grown into,
you can see that the changes
have indeed been quite dramatic.
It began as a joint effort
of two like-minded individuals,
and it steadily grew
its base of contributors.
WordPress 5.0 (Bebo)
had 432 contributors listed.
That's 432 people that made a meaningful
contribution to just one release.
In later videos in this section
you'll also learn about WordCamps,
the conferences about WordPress,
which have grown to huge conferences
with thousands of people celebrating
and collaborating on and with WordPress.
With continuously improved features,
the number of users naturally grew as well.
WordPress currently powers approximately
34.5% of all websites on the web.
This makes it more than 12 times bigger 
than the second biggest CMS.
So, remember when I mentioned
in the beginning
that this is a story
about the power of community?
I think that's what WordPress
is a textbook example of.
Starting small and becoming a giant
that continues to grow.
In the next lesson, we will learn more
about the WordPress community,
how it came to be, and how it is thriving.
Hey, look at how far you’ve come!
With 7 modules under your belt, by now,
you understand how to work with WordPress
and create a fantastic site.
But, before we let you go ahead and discover
the exciting WordPress world on your own,
there is one more thing to tell you about.
And that’s the WordPress community.
You’ve heard us mention it before.
And maybe you wondered, what is this mysterious
community they are talking about?
Where is it located, who is part of it?
And most importantly, why are people 
part of this community?
Well, I have some good news.
In this video, we will answer
those questions for you.
When I say WordPress community,
what do you imagine?
For some, it may sound like this
mysterious, exclusive club.
Only knowledgeable and 
experienced people are allowed in.
But guess what?
The WordPress community is enormous,
diverse in age, gender, and profile,
and it is spread out
all over the world.
The people in this community are passionate
about free, open-source software,
and the philosophy behind it.
They are all dedicated to making
WordPress better for all of us.
Also, the community has quite a reputation
for being open and welcoming.
And yes, anyone can be 
a part of it, including you.
Yes ok, but where is the catch?
How is everything free and open?
Are these people just giving away 
their time for free?
A short answer would be 
that WordPress and its community
have a nurturing 
give and take relationship.
We already told you about open-source software,
how awesome it is,
and why we are also 
proudly taking part in it.
WordPress is also open-source software.
That means that you can use it for free.
You already knew that.
But, at the same time, you can
also make money with WordPress.
Let’s look at an example.
You use themes to make 
your site look good, right?
And sure, there are 
many themes available for free.
But, for someone who wants to take
their website one step beyond,
a paid theme may be the way to go.
There is demand for themes beyond
the theme repository in WordPress.
So, there are companies or freelancers
that supply these themes.
Take ThemeForest, for instance.
It is a website where companies and
freelancers can sell their theme designs
and earn money from it.
Or, how about our own example?
Yoast is a plugin dedicated to SEO,
that you can use in WordPress.
It has a free and a paid, premium version.
So yes, we have a company,
offices, and people on a payroll.
And there are a ton of other companies
that make a variety of useful plugins.
All of us give to WordPress
and try to make it better,
but WordPress also gives back to us
by providing our livelihood.
You see, with this kind of set-up,
everyone has the interest to make WordPress
the best possible CMS it can be.
The more people use WordPress,
the more demand there will be
for high-quality plugins,
themes, and consultants.
For many WordPress fans, 
profit is not the most important reason
to be part of the WordPress community though.
Sharing, learning, growing,
developing, coming together.
These are the words you will most often hear
from WordPress fans and contributors.
I said that people aim 
to improve WordPress.
But how exactly do you do that?
Do you need to be hired by WordPress?
Do you need to apply somewhere, 
or know someone who knows someone?
The short answer is, anyone can contribute,
and yes, that includes you.
At this point you may be thinking:
but I am not a developer,
I don’t know anything about programming.
How I could contribute?
Or, you may say: But I just started using
WordPress. What do I know about it?
Remember, when I said that 
the WordPress community is diverse?
There are people with all kinds 
of backgrounds and knowledge levels
that bring their skills to the table.
Developers are just a part of it.
Other ways to contribute are, for example,
translating WordPress core,
themes, or plugins.
You could also help organize events,
answer support questions,
help out with design issues,
and so much more!
How do contributions work?
There are various ways, but the easiest
might be by attending a Contributor day.
During a Contributor day, 
visitors are usually divided into teams.
Sometimes these Contributor days
are more technically oriented.
Other times they are much more diverse.
Check out make.wordpress.org page, 
and see all the options for yourself!
We, at Yoast, for instance,
regularly contribute to WordPress.
Our founder Joost de Valk has been
a contributor to WordPress core
for over 10 years now.
Other members of our team 
have also contributed to WordPress core.
Remkus, Anton, Andrea, Jip, Taco, Caroline,
and Andy are just some of our contributors.
But others, like Taco and Karin, 
have been very active in organizing events.
Now, we know.
You may think, yes, but you people 
work in a company
that has a tight relationship 
with WordPress.
I cannot just join out of nowhere.
Well, our UX designer Tim, 
who you saw in one of the previous videos,
he has an interesting story.
Even though 
he was already working at Yoast,
he too thought that he had
nothing to contribute.
So, he went to a WordPress
Contributor day very reluctantly.
But, rather quickly he realized that not only
there was a lot to learn at the event,
he also could contribute
right there on the spot.
He started working on a design task.
And after that, he became a regular
and important contributor.
The moral of this story is, everyone, no matter
the level of experience, or background,
has some skill that has a place under
the WordPress sun.
Would you also like to become
part of the WordPress family?
In the next video, we will tell you about
some of the easiest ways you can do that!
Now that you know that the WordPress
community has open arms
for anyone who likes to join,
you might be considering taking the leap
and just doing it!
But where do you start?
In short, all you have to do to be part
of the WordPress community is to show up.
Well, show up where, you ask?
Let me tell you where to find
the community both offline and online!
Let's start offline.
You could find the community by joining
a local WordPress meetup.
Meetups are informal events
where WordPress enthusiasts
from all walks of life come together.
The format of these meetups
can be very different.
Most often, there's a talk by someone
from the WordPress community.
Other meetups focus more
on the networking aspect,
getting to know your fellow WordPressers
and maybe building
your next (business) relationship.
Sometimes the meetups can be more focused
on contributing to WordPress directly.
We at Yoast, for example, organize
a Contributor day in our office
every once in a while.
During those days we work
on various aspects of the WordPress project.
Joining a meetup or contributor day
can be a comfortable and relaxing way
to break the ice
and enter the vast WordPress world.
And yes, they usually are completely free!
You can find the official WordPress meetups
through meetup.com.
That's also where
you can sign up for them.
But if you are really up
for an exciting adventure,
you can attend a WordCamp.
There are local, regional,
and flagship WordCamps.
WordCamps are like meetups,
but bigger.
And instead of a single evening,
which is most common for meetups,
WordCamps usually last a full day,
or even multiple days.
Usually, there are many talks
or workshops by peers you can attend.
WordCamps are often preceded
or followed by a Contributor day.
To learn how to contribute,
simply join the team you want to help
and they will help you get started.
By joining, you will not only help others,
but you also learn a lot.
As an added bonus, you will directly
experience how WordPress is created
and what goes on behind the scenes.
All of this while having fun!
How much better can it get?
It does get better,
because besides being educational,
WordCamps are also a lot of fun!
There are stands by various companies
with goodies and presentations,
loads of food, amazing people,
great parties, and so much more!
WordCamps are not free,
but the ticket prices are very reasonable.
WordCamps rely heavily on volunteers
helping during the event.
So if you want to help your local WordCamp,
or if 'just going' feels a bit too scary,
volunteering can be a great way of joining
the WordPress community offline.
If we've managed to convince you
to join an event,
check out meetup.com
or the WordPress Events and News widget
on your WordPress dashboard.
You will be able to see an event overview
and pick the one you want.
In the reading materials for this lesson,
we will share with you some useful links
that can help you get started.
If going to an event makes you too anxious,
you can also start online.
Join the forums, the Make WordPress Slack
or check out Trac,
and experience the openness
and the warmth
of the WordPress community
we are talking about so enthusiastically.
Now that you are taking the first step and
learning about how to create with WordPress,
we want to encourage you.
Don't be afraid to explore.
Join an online discussion, go to an event,
see for yourself what the fuss is about.
You won't be disappointed.
Take advantage of all of these endless
opportunities to learn,
meet new people,
and become a part of a great big family.
Whatever your motivation is,
whether learning more about the software,
meeting people,
or learning about broader topics,
becoming part of the WordPress community
will be a rewarding experience.
