Now is the time for you to learn to fly. You’ve come so far and I hope you’ve been keeping up with your posts and updating your site with new content from time to time. Now comes the last article in this series – and the admonition for you to spread your wings and take off. You’re ready, believe me!

WordPress Thesis Menu Area

The main reason I recommended you get the Thesis theme was because it would allow you to have a platform to learn some PHP and CSS as you went along. I could write tons of articles about those two things, but why totally reinvent the wheel when there are so many great tutorials and books available on those subjects? It’s time for you to spread your wings and fly, and you can’t do that if I’m hanging on to your wings.

There are two files within the Thesis theme which you can use to customize your site: custom.css and custom_functions.php. Both of these files can be edited in the Custom File Editor section of the Thesis controls.

Customize Functionality
Click the dropdown box, select the file you wish to edit and click the “Edit selected file” button. Let’s look at the custom_functions.php first.

Thesis Custom File Editor Window

Thesis uses a concept called “hooks” to allow you to change some functionality of your site. For instance, if you want to move the menu from above your site’s header image to just below it (something I prefer to do) then you simply add the following two lines to custom_functions.php:

remove_action('thesis_hook_before_header', 'thesis_nav_menu');
add_action('thesis_hook_after_header', 'thesis_nav_menu');

The first line removes the menu from its default location, the second line puts the menu after the header. Easy, right?

So, how do you know what hooks are available and how to use them? Easy – it’s all documented on the Thesis web site. Remember what I told you last time – searching online is the best friend you have. It’s likely that whatever you want to do has already been figured out by someone who’s already been there. Learn from them.

There is also an excellent hooks tutorial by Rae Hoffman-Dolan on her Sugarrae site, I highly recommend you check it out: Thesis Tutorial – Hooks for Dummies.

Customize The Look
The other file you can edit for customization is custom.css. This is the custom Cascading Style Sheet. If you haven’t already, check out CSS: The Missing Manual by David McFarland (Amazon Affiliate link). You can also google “CSS Cheat Sheet” and find dozens of very well-made shortcut guides to what you can control using CSS.  There is also an excellent CSS tutorial on the Thesis web site.

Here’s a quick example. On this site, I wanted a black border to set off the footer from the rest of the site. All I had to do was add this to my custom.css file:

.custom #footer{
	border-color: Black;
}

Again, easy, once you know how to do it. Play around, don’t be afraid to fail. Keep trying and adding pieces until you get it working the way you want.

Backups!
Of course, it’s a good idea to make copies of these files in case you really mess up. For instance, it’s possible to completely trash your site if you make a mistake in your custom-functions.php file. Download a backup before you start messing with things in case you need to undo something to get your site running again – not that I’ve ever done that …

Test Domains
Another good idea is to set up a test site for experimentation. If you’re host allows it, set up a subdomain like test.yourdomain.com and install WordPress and Thesis in it. You can export your current content using the “Export” function within WordPress’s tools and you can export your Thesis customizations using the “Download Options” tool in the Thesis “Manage Options” section. Then you can use the import or “upload” pieces on your test site to help you make an exact duplicate of your site on the test domain. This allows you to make mistake and perfect your changes without messing up your “real” site.

Now go and spread your wings. If you ever have questions, please feel free to share them in the comments of any of the posts in this series or use the Contact Form to send in a question.

Summer does content strategy, and has been involved in content generation for 12 years. Her employer requires all employees to have a personal blog related to content in order to let them have a voice in the industry. They also blog on the corporate blog.

Summer tweets as @summerH

• Whether to have separate personal and business blogs really depends on what business you’re in
• At a recent conference, it was said “Being human is the new black.” You need to express your real voice in your writing
• The policy at her company is simple: “Don’t be stupid.”
• The things you write on a personal blog can lead to business contacts. You never know who’s going to read your stuff. They may never find you “business” blog, but might get to know you anyway
• Consider: if you want to be found – connect all your stuff together somehow. Otherwise, set up an alias to keep stuff completely separate
• Even a corporate blog should have a personal voice. People will relate more to a person than a “corporation.” Instead of having a “talking logo,” be a person or persons. People want to know the people who make up your business
• Summer tries not to tie herself to a calendar when blogging. She would rather write something interesting and timely rather than write “just because it’s Tuesday”
• When posting, consider a filter like, “What would my mother think about this” or sister, or dad, or whomever. That can help keep you in line and possibly out of trouble
• If you have separate blogs, you can use purposeful linking either by inclusion or omission

Some ideas I got from the Stump The Nerds panel at BlogathonATX with Jeremy Arntz, Jackie Dana and Pat Ramsey. They were taking questions on techie topics relating to blogging and other web sites.

• While all blog platforms have great features and are easy to set up, a self-hosted WordPress install gives you many more options, there are a lot more themes to choose from, and you have a lot of control over your site.
• Cloud hosting is good if you want to scale to more memory, disk space and processor power
• Use Akismet is a great plug-in for catching comment spam. It’s worth signing up for a WordPress.com account to get an API key
• Analytics is easy and important. Google Analytics is a good option
• Use Regenerate Thumbnail plugin for WordPress to automatically resize thumbnails when you redesign your site.
• Use a cache plugin to speed up your download times. W3TotalCache is a good option
• Nextgen Gallery is a great plugin if you display a lot of images
• Don’t forget a social media sharing plug in to help readers share your site
• Don’t go crazy downloading plugins, if you get too many plugins your site’s performance will take a hit. Plus, there’s more updates to keep track of and more chances for problems
• A good category structure can benefit your SEO more than tags. Don’t forget the basics like good content and titles, too
• Tags are very handy for plugins that display related stories with a post
• Learning CSS, PHP and HTML are very important. Especially if you try to get help from a developer. You should have a sense of what’s going on – it’ll save you time and money in the long run
• Backups are very important. This is especially true if you try to hack some code yourself. It’s nice to be able to roll back changes if you mess something up
• Don’t install a plugin just because you think it’s cool. Install it only if you have a real need for the functionality it offers
• Is SEO important for the personal blogger? It is if you want people to read your blog. But, not every blog will be successful. If no one is interested in what you right about, all the SEO in the world will help it. Consider tweaking your content or changing your format
• Make sure to delete old plugins and themes you no longer use
• Make sure to use a good strong password. That’s your first line of defense against hacking. Also, avoid using “Admin” for the admin user name. (I wrote a post about creating strong passwords a while back: Four Steps To Better Passwords - you might find it helpful)

Amanda tweets as @ImtheQ and describes herself as a technology professional and a social media gadfly. Here are some ideas which I caught in the session:

• The best way to learn anything is to just get in there and do it. Yes, you’ll make mistakes, but that’s how you learn
• If you have a hard time coming up with content on a regular basis, you may want to ask yourself if you should really be blogging on that topic. Perhaps you can find something else you’re passionate about – then you’ll never run out of topics.
• Focus on quality over quantity
• If you must produce content on a regular basis (contractual or work-related) then keep notes when ideas hit you. The old-fashioned note pad works great for this
• Use an editorial calendar to keep yourself organized. Don’t try to use it to force yourself to stay on a schedule
• Make your blog personal. It will be your own niche, rather than trying to fit into something else. It’ll make the blog more personal and thus more interesting. When you’re doing what you really love, it’ll be interesting and people will relate to you
• Be unique! “Who wouldn’t like you?”
• You’re never going to appeal to everyone. Don’t try to attract the most people because it’ll cause you to be mediocre. Even for business, you don’t have to appeal to everyone
• Sometimes advice from “professionals” isn’t quite right. Sometimes you need to buck the trend
• Don’t contribute to the crap content. Wait until you’re really inspired and write something great
• It’s not fun to sit down and force yourself to write. That’s not how it’s done well.
• It’s not a bad idea to write every day for practice, but that doesn’t mean you have to publish something every day
• Before posting: stop, wait a couple hours and re-read it and edit. You’ll be a lot happier with the product if you do.
• If something is important to you, you’ll write well about it.
• Of course, if you’re blogging or doing social media for a client or employer, you need to keep in mind that you speak for them and not just as yourself
• It was consensus of the assembled group that grammar is important in blog posts. Using good grammar shows you care about what you’re writing about.

Talmadge Boyd (@Talmadge) headed up with first session at BlogathonATX and gave out some great tips on video bloggin. Here they are, in no particular order of importance:

• Anyone who’s not afraid of their face should video blog. You shouldn’t be afraid, how you look like how you’re going to look.
• Check out The War of Art by Steven Pressfield (Amazon Affiliate link).
• Don’t use the excuse that “I’m just not into it today” or “The muse just isn’t with me” for creating. If you create for a living, get out there and do it.
• Content-wise, everything needs to be bite-sized. People don’t consume things like they used to. A challenege it to make thjngs short enough and compelling enough to to get your message across.
• Write a short piece and then shoot based on on that idea or thought.
• Don’t overthink things to the point where you don’t actually do anything. You can have a great idea but it’s no good if you don’t actually produce something to get your idea out somehow.
• It’s a great idea to make sure you include a transcript of your content when you embed video in your site. Very important for SEO purposes.
• Make sure to include keywords from your content in your file name. Don’t neglect keywords in descriptions and keywords when you upload to YouTube.
• Video quality is very important, but audio quality is just as important. People will watch content with good audio and bad video more than the opposite. If you’re trying to articulate something, you need to be heard. Consider investing in a condenser microphone – not too expensive, but very effective.
• Don’t let editing get in the way of creative time. It’s almost better to just reshoot the thing (if it’s short enough). Don’t be afraid to practice a little, too.
• When doing webinars, consider sitting a camera off to the side to record yourself so you can have multiple angles and repurpose the content.
• Natural light is great. Use the sun as much as you can.
• Invest in a small tripod. It helps so you don’t shake too much.
• Rule of thumb for length is 1:30. But, if you have compelling content, people will watch (think Ted talks).
• David Haddad offered this tip: If you’re too blue (because of lighting), consider putting a different color on your monitor screen to balance out the color of your face.
• For those who are interested in a white balance card, check out this article on Wilsonart’s “The Statement” blog: http://goo.gl/AwU2B (Disclaimer: I work for Wilsonart)

We’ve come a long way in a short time in our WordPress lessons. Up until now, we’ve mostly stayed in the pre-built “plug and play” areas of the system. Now it’s time to start digging into more advanced stuff. Back in our fourth lesson I recommended you set aside some cash to purchase the Thesis Theme. Now it’s time to start digging into it.

There are two reasons I recommend a premium theme:

1. It offers you a lot more control over the look and feel of the site
2. It’s a great learning opportunity.

Customization
There are a great many free themes available for WordPress. Some are quite good while some … well … you get what you pay for. If you make customizations to a theme and then, later, update your WordPress install or the theme you may lose all your work. Of course, you can document all your changes and redo them every time you update the software, but that’s rather a hassle. A premium theme like Thesis takes updates into account and is set up so your custom work is not lost.

Learning
Modifications in other themes involves hacking into the WordPress code or the theme’s code. While I want to encourage learning here, I don’t want you to get in over your head and break something which will cause you to completely trash your site.

A Note About Security
Themes, like any piece of software, are liable to have bugs and security flaws in them. Unless your theme is actively supported, you may not get updates in a timely fashion (or at all). Premium themes are better supported so your site is stronger in this area – if you install the updates (and I highly recommend you do).

Installing Thesis is fairly straightforward:

• Go to the DIY Themes web site, click on the “See Plans & Pricing” button
• Choose your plan – unless you plan to handle more than one web site, the Personal Option is probably best
• Fill out the form, pay the fee and download the software
• Once you are registered, log into the DIY Themes web site and follow the very easy installation instructions. Here some hints to help you along:
• Follow the instructions in order – this is very important
• You will need to upload the theme’s files to your host. Check your host’s help area for instructions. Be sure to copy the files into the folder specified on DIY’s web site
• After you upload the files, pay special attention to the permissions settings. Again, you may need to check your host’s instructions on how to do this (DIY Themes provides special instructions for GoDaddy users)
• When you finish with all the installation steps, activate the theme just as we did in the Themes and Plugins lesson.

WordPress Thesis Menu Area

After you install and activate Thesis, you’ll notice a new area in the left menu – The Thesis area. Let’s go over some of the settings you’ll want to check right away. Click the plus sign at the top of the sections to show the details:

• Site Options
• Custom Style Sheet Options – make “Enable Custom Style Sheet” is selected. This is how you will do some of your customizations
• If you like, you can change the text of the “Save” button in the “Change Save Button Text” area
• Design Options
• Site Layout – Choose how many columns you want your site to have and the width of the columns
• Column Order – Choose how you want the columns arranged
• Display Options – Choose how you want post names set in the header and what to display with your posts in the byline options
• Fonts, Colors and More – choose the colors for the various elements of your site
• Be sure to look at the other options settings. Each section is very well describe and offers suggestions for how to set things based on how you want them to show.
• Header Image – is where you upload the image for your site’s header

We’ll look at the other parts of the Thesis selections in the next couple of articles.

Techie Little Secret
Here’s where you can really learn. If you run into any questions or want to know how to do something within your Thesis setup, DIY Themes has an excellent support system. Once you purchase the theme, you can log into their web site and search through the documentation and the forums. Chances are, someone else has already asked your question and the answer is in there. That’s the secret of being a good techie – knowing where to look for find answers to your technical issues. Not every techie person will admit it, but searching online is the best friend you have!

Homework:

• Purchase and Install the Thesis Theme
• Go through the settings outlined here
• Check out the other settings areas and familiarize yourself where they are and read up on what they do
• Log into the DIY Themes web site, click on the User’s Guide link and read up on filters, hooks and custom.css

Please Note: All links in this post are affiliate links.

So far in our journey looking at WordPress, we’ve stayed well within the parts of the system which make it easy to use, even for those with limited technical chops. As we move further along, however, we shall start getting into more tech and less “drag and drop.” The bridge for our transition is widgets.

Some widgets are simply drag and drop controls which add functionality to your WordPress web site. To access the Widgets section of WordPress, expand the “Appearance” selection in the menu and click on the “Widgets” link.

WordPress Widget Selection Area

When you get in there, you will see there are a lot of pre-built widgets which are ready for you to drag and drop into the side bar(s) of your site. A few you should seriously consider adding are a search box, a list of recent posts, and perhaps a chronological summary of posts. Since those are some of the pre-built ones, they are easy to implement.

WordPress Widget Sidebar Selection Area

For example, to add a search box, look for the search widget in the “Available Widgets” area. Drag that control to the sidebar area and drop it in. Click on the down arrow the right of the header to edit the name. For instance, here I renamed it “Search the Crossing:” to give it a little direction. Click on “Save” and you’re done.

Your theme may allow for one or two side bars. If you have two, you can choose which one you want the widget to go into. There’s no advantage to having one or two side bars, it’s up to how you want the site to look. I find having two rather handy, but it does make the main reading area a little smaller. I think it works, you may disagree.

The “Text” widget is quite handy. This widget allows you to enter text, HTML or JavaScript code to create custom pieces of your own. This can be very powerful – and a lot more techie than, perhaps, some of the things we’ve done.

Add A Twitter Button To Your Sidebar
This is fairly simple to do and is a great example for using a text widget:

• Drag a text widget to your side bar, click on the down arrow to open it into edit mode
• Go to Twitter’s resource area where you can build the code for your “Follow” button on the fly (preferably in another browser window or tab)
• Build the button by picking your selections
• Copy the code from the box on the right side of the page
• Go back to your site, and paste the code into the widget box
• Click save.

WordPress Widget Text Edit Box

It’s that easy. You can add Facebook, Google+ and other social buttons much the same way. If you want to do some affiliate marketing, you can copy and paste the necessary code to display your ads. I know, you can also download plugins which will do much the same things, but this gives you a lot more control over how the items display and gives you the opportunity to learn how HTML and scripting codes can interact on your site.

Now your site is pretty much completed. From here you can add more plugins, widgets, and more importantly, content to build out your site.

The next step is to start getting into more customization. One way to do this is to hack the WordPress and your theme’s code and CSS files yourself. This works well, but when you update (and you will need to update) your customizations will be lost. You can keep track of what you change and redo them after every update, but this is very time-consuming and a pain.

A better way to handle this is to purchase  a premium theme which allows you to do  your customizing and keeps them when updates to the code are done. For this space, I use Thesis (affiliate link). For the next step in our learning process, we will install the Thesis theme and go through a couple customizations to get you going.

Homework

• Add widgets to your site. Make sure to add at least a couple text widgets so you can see how they work
• Purchase the Thesis theme. You can click the link above or click the ad to the right. If you’d rather I didn’t get a cut of the sale (conflict of interest and all that) go to the diyThemes web site directly and purchase there. For now,  purchase the “Personal Option.” If you later decide to use Thesis for other web sites, you can upgrade with full credit for what you already purchased.
• Build out some content. I recommend posting at least once a week.
• Watch for updates! It’s very important to keep your WordPress install, themes and plugins updated.

If you’ve been following along in the series, you would have added a post, or two or three to your WordPress-based web site. Now it’s time to get into the details of categories and menus.

As you create content, it’s a great idea to categorize and organize your posts. This makes it easier for readers to find posts which may interest them or which cover a specific topic they are looking for. For instance, if you want to find all the posts in the “Marketers Learning Tech” series, you could browse through the site, clicking on the “Previous Entries” link at the bottom of each page until you find the one your looking for. It would be a lot easier, though, if you go to the menu, click on “Marketing” and then click on “Marketers Learning Tech” to find a nice, more concise, list of posts. You could also search, and we’ll cover that when we go over widgets.

Let’s Do This – Categories
To start your  category organizing, click on the “Categories” link in the “Posts” section of the left menu. To add a new category, simply fill in the form under “New Category” and then click the “Add New Category” button at the bottom of the page. To edit a category’s information, hover over the category in the list to the right and then click on “Edit.”

WordPress Edit Category Area

Change the information required and save your changes. If you want a category to be a sub-category of another, select a parent from the dropdown list in the “Parent” section.

WordPress Page and Categories Menu Selection

Let’s Do This – Menus
To create a menu, click the “Menus” link in the “Appearance” section of the right menu. To create a new menu, click the plus sign to the right of the main “Menus” header. Give your menu a name; I recommend giving it a name which will later help you remember what it’s for. In my example, I use to the totally unimaginative, but easy to recall name of “HeaderMenu.”

To add categories and pages to your menu, look to the left towards the bottom. There are the “Pages” and “Categories” selection areas. Click the check boxes of the items you want to add to the menu and then click on the “Add to Menu” button. You need to add pages and categories separately.

Once you have your selections, go back to the area to the right and sort your selections into the desired order by dragging and dropping the boxes around. If you want one of your selections to be a sub-selection of another, drag that selection under it’s parent and then drag slightly to the right. You’ll see the dash-lined box pop in when you’ve got it in the right place. Drop it to set. Once you’re done, click the “Save Menu” button.

To set your menu, go back to the upper-right part of this form and select the menu in the “Theme Locations” area. Some themes support more than one menu. If yours does, read up on exactly how to set these up in the theme documentation.

WordPress Menu Sorting

More Meat
This is just the bare basics of categories and menus. Certainly if you’ve already designed or helped create web sites at all you know there is a lot more background work that goes into menu designs and such.  If you’d like to read more on the topic, I highly recommend you pick up Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Peter Morville and Louis Rosenthal (Amazon Affiliate link). I also reviewed this book back in May of 2009. It’s well worth reading to get more ideas on how to create great menus and navigation on the web sites you design – including this one.

 Homework

• Set up some categories (if you haven’t done so already)
• Create a menu
• Add the menu to your web site

In the last installment of “Marketers Learning Tech” we created our first page. Today we’re going to go over Themes and Plugins. One of the advantages of WordPress and other content management systems (CMS) is that they allow you to keep the data separated from the presentation. Doing this allows you to redesign and add functionality without having to reformat and redo all the information on your site.

Themes
In order to find the perfect theme for your site, expand the “Appearance” section of the menu on the left and then click on “Themes.” By default, your site will be using either the Twenty Ten or Twenty Eleven theme (depending on when you installed the software). It’s OK if you want to stick with one of those, but to learn more about how a CMS works, it’s a good idea to at least check out other themes. To choose another, click on “Install Themes” at the top of the page and start browsing.

There are literally thousands to choose from – some better than others. If you find one which you think you’d like to use, click on the “Preview” and see a screen shot. After looking at the screen shot, if you’re still convinced it might work on your site, click on “Install” and the code will be automatically downloaded and installed.

Pick out two or three selections and install them on your site. Go back to the “Manage Themes” selection and click “Preview” on each theme to double check if it’ll really work for you on your site. When you make your final selection, click on “Activate” and that theme will be the one used for your site.

Some of you may be asking yourselves (or yelling at the screen), “How can we pick a theme if we haven’t added any content yet?” Good question. I like to have at least most of the background, grunt work done before adding a lot of content. That way, later, you’ll have more time to focus on creating content rather than messing with themes and such. As I mentioned above, one of the great things about a CMS is that you can change the look on the fly without having to recreate or reenter the content.

If you’d rather add some content before picking a theme, you can do so. Once we’ve gotten past the part where we add some posts, come back to this section and have at it.

Plugins
In the part on WordPress Settings, I walked you through installing your first plugin, Login LockDown. Go back to that lesson and review how to install a plugin because we’re going to add a few more today:

• Akismet is a great tool for screening out comment spam. It is installed by default and I highly recommend you use it. Follow the instructions on how to get an API key (free for personal web sites) and activate it. This will save you gobs of trouble later.
• Fast Secure Contact Form is a great, easy to use, contact form piece.
• Photo Dropper helps you find images in Flickr’s Creative Commons area for you to use in your posts. It allows you to search for images and automatically add them to your posts along with the proper attribution.
• WP Super Cache creates a very nice web cache and compresses your posts so they download faster.

In last last installment of this series, I recommended you start a web site in order to learn more about tech. If you haven’t done that yet, please review that article and do the homework listed at the end.

Today we’re going to go over some of the settings in WordPress you’ll need to be familiar with before you start adding content. First off, the menu on left side. Today we want to make sure the “Settings” section is set up for best results. By default, the menu sections are collapsed, click on the main part to expand the selections.

First the General Section:

• Site Title - This is typically the name of your web site. On this one, it’s “The Crossing of Marketing and IT.”
• Tag Line – This is a short description of the site. It’s a good idea to write something descriptive. On this site, it’s “The Crossing of Marketing & IT: Where Marketing and Technology meet – Web + Search + Social Marketing, Teamwork, Leadership & More.”
• WordPress Address (URL) – This is the domain you registered. You can enter it as “http://site.com” or “http://www.site.com” as you see fit. Either way is correct, but you need to refer to your site by that address after it’s set.
• Site Address (URL) – Typically, set the same as the WordPress Address.
• E-mail Address – This is the email address which will receive messages when someone posts a comment. Make sure this is a valid address which you will check often.
• Membership – If you intend your site to be membership driven, then check this box. If you are writing articles for the public, you’ll want to leave this box unchecked.
• New User Default Role – If you left the “Membership” box unchecked, you can ignore this setting. If you checked the box, then select the default role you want new users to have. You’ll likely want to leave this on “Subscriber.”
• Timezone – Select your time zone. This is important if you plan to write articles and schedule them for publication.
• Date Format – Pick how you want dates to appear
• Time Format – Pick how you want times to appear
• Week Starts On – Pick the day on which you’re week begins.

Writing Section- For now, let’s leave this at the default settings.