Web Write 101

Just back from running a course for Cambridge University Press.

The Press then

In a corridor leading to their meeting rooms they have a fascinating display showing their printing technology from the very beginning to about 20 years ago.

These beautiful machines got me thinking about my journey to web publishing and how much things really have changed.

I remember using some of these amazing machines during my graphic design degree at Chelsea in the late 80s.

I had forgotten how fiddly they were to set up and use. And how long the process took!

WordPress now

Printing technology has come a long way since the 80s, and web publishing has come a long way since I made my first site in 1995. My favourite way of making websites at the moment is WordPress. I’ll let you into some of my secrets on the course I run for the Publishing Training Centre in London.

Come to my London WordPress course to discover just how easy web publishing can be! A few places are left for the course on 22 September.

Here’s what I cover:

WordPress basics:

• What is WordPress? WordPress.com vs WordPress.org
• How to set up a self-hosted WordPress site or blog

Configuring WordPress:

• Getting the ‘settings’ right
• Making WordPress behave like a website or blog

Content

• Drafts and publishing
• Adding and editing content in pages and posts
• Adding ‘media’: images, PDFs, Word documents, video and audio
• Adding links

Blogging essentials

• Writing a blog post
• Managing posts
• Understanding tags and categories
• Managing comments and fighting comment spam

Customising WordPress

• The most useful plugins
• Sidebars, widgets and badges
• Where to find themes, free and premium
• The pitfalls of free themes
• Making WordPress search engine friendly

WordPress administration

• Best practices for upgrading WordPress
• Managing WordPress users, permission levels and log-ins
• Managing files
• The WordPress dashboard
• Measuring your site’s traffic with Google Analytics
• Importing and exporting data
• Backups and protecting WordPress.

Hope to see you there!

Tags: printing, wordpress

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 11th, 2011 at 7:56 am and is filed under courses. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.