 All right. Well, obviously I'm not out. Sorry on your program is DIY WordPress and I have a quick question who here is actually used WordPress before? Is there anyone here who hasn't used WordPress? Okay, good. I was gonna. All right. Get out. I want to see you here Kyle. Oh Cool. My quicker doesn't work. This would be fun Technical difficulties. I work in the web So how long have you been using WordPress show of hands? Who here has been using WordPress for at least one year? At least one year. All right, at least three years five years since 2011 since 2009 Since 2008 Oh, don't beat me. I was wondering if someone else wanted to give the talk I'm fine So the year is 2009 and I Jeff the time I was a college student at BYU and while I was there I was working as a graphic designer in the athletic department and we needed to create a portfolio for Grade one of the classes that I had I was an advertising major and I had heard that WordPress was pretty easy So I'm like, okay. We'll try it out and in less than two weeks. I had a website and To give you a quick glimpse of what I looked like in college Yeah, some random nerd broken nose. I actually had some hair and Eventually I had to move away from college. I had to go for jobs So I grew up in Michigan I'm from this area and it was on the short list of potential locations where I could work now somehow I managed to find a job as a web designer in Royal Oak and I really don't know how that happened because The year is 2009 and if anyone remembers what the economy was doing in this city at that time Somehow I got a job. I don't know. So even though I was hired in as web designer I had basic HTML and CSS knowledge and I could make an HTML website. I also knew how to tweak a WordPress theme because of that Portfolio they had to do it could modify the So one day my boss comes up to me and he says do you know how to create a WordPress theme from scratch and Realize at this time. I do not know PHP or anything about it. And so I'm like, hmm If you're asked that question, what would you say? I said yes and Immediately I started googling how to build a WordPress theme now I got enough that I was able to build up a site just kind of looking through tutorials a lot of them And that is what started my career building WordPress sites Now I build custom plugins full-time. I build Custom themes occasionally But the good thing is I started with the do-it-yourself approach and that should give you at least maybe a little bit of hope Because this guy here. He's got no clue what he's doing So let's get started Now I'm going to assume that most have a basic WordPress understanding. This is not a 101 course. This is not a pages vs. Post talk Which I was told the one that I'm replacing was This is not how to use the editor or how to download a plugin or a theme If you need that places to learn WordPress, there's a happiness bar on the third floor below You can go down talk to some nice people there Just talk to people here at WordCamp Detroit or you can go look at WordPress TV or Also, there's local meet-ups that you can attend got a couple of them in the Detroit area There's one in Ann Arbor as well, or you can take some classes So let's start with using themes Themes are pretty easy to get to you go to appearance themes in the editor And these are the default themes on a clean WordPress installation No slack So they are great themes and how do we know that? Because there is one million strong of This theme on here. So you know that you're going to have a great website when it looks like everyone else's website So that means you probably need to select a theme for yourself So what are some of the things that you need to ask when you're selecting a theme? First thing is find out what your budget is find out if you're looking for a free theme or a premium theme If you are willing to go full DIY Then you probably can get away with a free thing if you're going to need to have some sort of support You're gonna want to have a premium theme and I'm going to turn off sound right now That's not the sound button Cool, I can't turn off sound with the TV. That's awesome. I already did they're not popping up So another thing you want to look for when selecting a theme is speed or features 25% of website traffic after the first four seconds people drop off Sometimes even quicker depending on how impatient the person is So you need to think about how long does it take to load your site? Especially when someone is on a mobile phone There's a lot of themes out there. There are kind of a one-size-fits-all theme They've got lots of options that come with them. So I'm gonna have portfolios nice galleries A lot of them will have any single slider that you can imagine and I need to put a disclaimer on here with the slider If there's a slider on there Don't use the slider. I know Kyle talked about it earlier and I could agree completely Sliders they might look cool. Not really. I don't even think they look that cool, but They slow down your site. They're not accessible Don't use them. So if you have something that has all these fun sliders on the theme Then that means that you're loading a lot of extra things that you probably don't really want on your website because Sliders are bad. They're the devil No, but he said if you don't if you use a if you don't use a slider, then you go to heaven or something like that I Think I'm paraphrasing and switching things together, but it works You also need to ask yourself if you want something that is using the WordPress regular editor Or if it's something that's using a special page builder If you can do what you want with just regular WordPress editor, that's completely fine I'm normally on that boat because I kind of keep it in the text only mode But some people page builders are easier for them It might make it easier to manage or it might make it harder Also, the things remember with page builders a lot of them will slow down your site because they might be adding extra bloke or sliders So What kind of user experience are you looking for when you're selecting a theme? What is the purpose of the site? Are you trying to get users to learn information? Are you trying to get them to pay you? Are you trying to get them to register? Are you wanting them to read stuff while you have ads on the side? So you're making revenue What style are you looking for? Do you want something that's clean? Do you want something? That's modern? Maybe something grungy. I don't know Western musical What do you need to look for in a good theme once you've already narrowed down all those things? Things that you have to pay attention to The first is you want something that is simple. You need simplicity Find a niche theme if possible for what it is that you're looking for what the purpose of your website is going to be Every option or feature that you have on the site It can slow it down because there's more things that have to be loaded onto your site So ask yourself when you find these themes Do I need every single feature that's on here? Is there a way that these features can be disabled? You want to limit your features because it makes your site go faster? Also, you need to make sure that the site is responsive. Who in this room has a mobile device? Who here has looked at any website on the mobile device in the last 24 hours? So everyone it's 2018. That's all I have to say make sure your site is responsive So responsive means that your site is going to look good in a browser Or it's going to look good on a mobile device People are still able to access the content They're able to do what it is that you want them to do when they're scrolling through on a phone on a tablet It just means that your site is going to adjust Properly and people will be able to use it Now browser compatibility is another thing you have to pay attention to Does anyone remember those messages that were like 20 years old that said this website works best on internet? 5.5 So this is exactly the same with responsive sites. You don't want to have some disclaimer if this site only works on Nutscape navigator and one because that browser is dead, but two You don't want to limit it because you don't know what people are using when they come to visit your site If the theme looks bad in the browser that you're looking at then that means one of two things one the theme is not Doesn't have any browser compatibility or two. It's just a bad theme. So don't use it Either way though the theme is going to be bad so one disclaimer I want to put on there is Does The site need to look the same in every browser and the answer is no it does not have to be a pixel perfect thing if you have something where It still has the general look and feel it's still on brand Then it's correct if you think about mobile sites a lot of times You're not going to want to squish down the whole site. So it looks perfect. You want an optimal experience for users So browser compatibility is not having sites look exactly the same across all browsers Next you want to ask yourself what kind of support is offered with this theme If it's free your support is going to be limited If it is premium you want to first find out if support is even offered some themes that you purchase You buy the theme and then you go with it. You also want to find out how long support is offered if it is offered I found that there's a lot of premium themes that they have extra features added to them And so they may actually require more support. So keep that in mind limit your features unless it's something that you really need and If it's a feature that's In the theme you might as well see if there's a plugin available that you can use Instead of having it tied directly to your theme that way if you change your theme later on You still are able to have that functionality on your website So how do you choose a good theme? The first thing you want to do is check out the demo site that exists Click around see how long it's going to take to load that site You also want to resize your browser that way you can see if it's responsive see what it looks like at different sizes Unfortunately, there's no like every single person has an iPhone with this size and everyone has a tablet But all the sizes are different So it's usually best to just grab that bottom corner and shrink it down And that way you can just see how things adjust on the page You also want to open that site that demo site in other browsers See if it looks good on those as well If it's a free theme Then try it out on a develop site development site that you might have if you've got one of the free tools like desktop server or Local by flywheel setup then you can create a site Free theme on there or if it's a premium theme and you purchased it already you can install on there and see how it works out Also realize that if you have a premium theme a lot of times their demo It has all these nice hero images and call to actions and then when you install on your site It's not going to look like that Some of them will have a way to import in their defaults and then you have to modify those But a lot of times there is extra setup required to make your site look like the demo site if that's what you're going for Another thing to look for is ratings and reviews find out What the rating of that theme is and also read those reviews that are on there Find out what problems you go have any of the pain points that they had with installing or using these themes and also if there is A theme that has lots and lots of five star reviews And there's no real reason why it's five star It very well could have been spammed with those five star reviews So take that into consideration and the same goes on the opposite if it has lots of one star reviews with no reasoning It might have been trolled into having a lower rating another thing to do is if there's negative reviews on there see if whoever built the theme whatever company or person has Responded to those requests that way you can see if well, what kind of support you might get from that Other considerations that you want is plugin support Is there a specific plugin that you need to use? If so, you might want to find out if it's going to work with that theme Usually you should be okay, but there's things that you might have to keep in mind A good example is a lot of the page builders. Sometimes plugins don't play as nicely to be integrated into them Is your theme translation ready if you are planning on supporting multiple languages? And is it SEO friendly how to find out with these ask around Yeah, so most most of the modern themes that have come out developers are Pretty good about making sure that they follow those standards some of the older ones you have to be worried about but You just want to make sure and a good way is just ask the developer straight out if you're planning on purchasing Or if it's a free one just see what other people have or ask Or ask someone to just quickly look at it and they can tell you just by looking at the code base a lot of times Or ask a developer I guess So what are ways that you can customize the theme? The first is there's the customizer most modern themes They support the customizer and you have the option to control a lot of the colors the styles in there One thing to point out is if it's a theme that's been created by developer Specifically for you it's been tailored then you might have less options than normal and that's because it's been made for you So you may not always have as many options in the customizer in that situation Or sometimes you might have a theme where they don't support as much besides the defaults that come with WordPress So don't expect to always have complete control using the customizer But that's what the developer has given you access to Also, you can add custom css to a theme and it was in version 4.8 I believe wordpress where they added it into the Conditional css and if you actually know css you can type it in and you can make the modifications to your theme And it goes live awesome If you have jetpack installed and you know what a css Pre-processor is jetpack gives you access to those if you don't know what that is then ignore what I just said Another way to customize a theme is with a child theme Now if you want to add your own styles using a style sheet or if you're adding extra functionality to a theme You want to create a child theme and the reason being These themes have been created by someone else. Let's say that they find a bug somewhere on there And they push an update that update then goes through and all of your modified code is gone That theme that I created in 2009 for my portfolio site My favorite color is blue. And so I was like, okay. Well, we'll change some of these blacks to blues and we'll make it look a little bit different than the standard that's out there was just a free theme And then there was the update button. I'm like, oh, I should probably update And I lost all those changes and learn that one the hard way. So if you're making Changes to files rather than actually changing the files create a child theme if you don't know how to do that Talk to someone here who knows how to do it and we can help you also Chrome dev tools firefox dev tools whatever dev tools you want to use is another great way to Quickly see the changes. I know kyle had mentioned in his talk earlier About using chrome dev tools to quickly prototype something because you're able to go in and change them and see it happen in real time So the way to access this and sometimes it'll appear on the right side sometimes appear on the bottom There's way that you can change that to your preference But if you do command shift c on a mac or control shift c on a pc It opens dev tools and will automatically have the element inspector or you can just right click and click inspect element If you click on any of these properties on the side then For instance font size is 1.6 r.m You can actually use arrow keys to move up and down and it will change it in real time For you Now if you use the wordpress custom CSS editor All the changes that you type you will be able to see them happen But it takes a little bit of a second for it to read through all the css and then apply it to your site While this it'll happen in real time and just automatically change it then when you find the changes that you like you just move them over to the custom css and You're good to go One thing to point out is if you are using i believe it's safari Then you have to actually go up into their preferences and enable their dev tools And i'm not quite sure where it is because i never use safari But that's something to point out is sometimes you might have to find a way to enable the dev tools from the browser after themes there's plugins and plugins are also nice because they can add any sort of functionality Website just about whatever you can think of and there's so many of them In fact, there's 55 000 of them So that's just the free ones on the wordpress repository. There's a lot of other sources to get more of the premium ones And how do you know which is a good plugin to install on your site? Exactly it's further on in my talk, but yes So The first thing you need to do is find out a list of what it is that you need for this plugin So how do you choose the plugin? Make a list of exactly what your must-haves are and find a plugin that can at least check off one of those must-haves Preferably something that's not adding extra features unless it's something that you want It's pointless to put on a plugin that is close to having what you want if it doesn't hit your must-haves because Trying to hack plugins together It's possible, but a lot of them don't like to play nice with each other So just like with themes you need to find out what your budget is for these plugins Do you have no budget and you want to go free you want to set them all up yourself or do you need support? Look for a premium plugin Keep in mind though that a lot of the premium plugins they require you to pay yearly for support updates And that is very good. I would recommend not canceling that after it expires Because even though the plugin will still work Your support is going to end at that moment and let's say that you're using a Popular plugin to do something And a vulnerability is found since it's popular enough your site could get targeted So you might as well know that that plugin is always up to date So it's something to remember is if you're purchasing premium plugins or premium themes for that matter You want to make sure that you're keeping things updated Another thing to ask when choosing a plugin is any Integrations do you need to have I'm not talking about just social media, but you got to think about processes Is there something that you need with Custom forms going on with payments or do you need to have advanced searching or filters? Do you need? Things that are talking to other plugins that might be created You need to know this because As I said before plugins don't always play nice together So if they say that they're going to work then a lot of times that helps out and you just want to find out Will this work with this? So how to choose a good plugin and the first one is Check out the ratings Read what these recent reviews are find out what people had to say and find out what it is They liked and didn't like about the plugin If just like with themes if there's lots of five star reviews or one star reviews with no reason There might be a reason for it that is not related to the plugin itself See if support has responded to negative requests And another thing is with plugins specifically a lot of times their developers or some of the top plugins will actually have social media accounts on facebook or twitter And you can see how they've responded to people with those So it's another resource that you have on getting support and seeing how support interacts with people Next is find out when this plugin was last updated now it preferably should be within the last two years But honestly it needs to be sooner than that Really the tested up to value should be the latest version of wordpress If it is tested up to the latest version of wordpress, that means that your plugin author or company They're always checking the plugin. They're actively working on it and it's not a dead plugin Find out if the plugin is popular. See how many active installs exist for it now Active installs it means this is actually running on another website And so if those three million websites are not broken, then That's probably a good sign that the plugin is good to use Now one thing to point out is you might have a plugin that you found that hits A lot of your must-haves for features and it doesn't have many active installs It might be something that's a new plugin or it's so niche that Not as many people are going to use it. So active installs It's good if it's really high, but if it's really low, it's not the end of the world. It depends on the situation Another thing to do is ask around find out if people know any good plugins that exist Maybe someone knows one that's going to help your situation So you can ask people here at wordcamp detroit if they have any favorites ask people social media email someone These are the ones that I use on just about every site jetpack Yoast SEO gravity forms and migrate wb pro and that last one Is more developer oriented so you probably don't need that but it helps moving from a development site to a live site But the other ones jetpack is a suite of plugins that will go and Gives you a bunch of additional features And the nice thing is you can turn on or off those features. So it's not something that you have to Install everything and have lots of bloat on your site. You can determine what it is that you want on or off Yoast SEO, it's probably one of the better SEO plugins out there If you install that it will give you a list or criteria to help improve your search engine Optimously the best way to improve your search engine optimization Is to just write good content and be consistent if you want to rank Start up a blog Find the best content that you can write about such and such a topic and keep going from there build an audience that way It's going to take time, but there is no Really fast way to jump in your SEO And then gravity forms is just an easy plugin to Have forms with lots of features if you want to add them So what happens if you are in way over your head? Themes and plugins they control most of your site and if you can't get things working like that It might be time that you need to talk to a developer Happens to every time. I'm honestly not sure how many times I've had to ask Kyle Help for a random thing that I've come across In fact, there's just a couple months ago. I asked Amit Rathi For help with integrating React into a WordPress plugin and more than happy to help the WordPress community is a great community And so make connections at word camps like this talk to people and if you have questions ask them a lot of them will help out Sometimes though you might have to find a developer You just need to pay and have them take care of it So when do you want to find a developer the first is if you have no time? I mean no time could be You got into a project and you realize that this deadline is a lot sooner than what you expected And you just don't know how to do it Or it's something that It might be faster if you outsource to another company and have them take care of it for you Or you just Are planning on learning something but you don't have time to learn it Another thing is if it has crazy functionality If you've got something that's so intense that you don't know where to begin with building for this process Talk to someone else This is really common with integrations that happen between APIs of other sites So if you're trying to integrate with some third party source and have it work into your site A lot of those have documentation some don't and it's not fun trying to make them talk to each other Or sometimes you might just have things that are not working at all And you've tried you've tried You've looked around you've worked around you've tried as many stack overflow solutions as exist that are probably wrong And in the end you just give up or you pay someone else to do it So how do you pre-qualify a developer? There's things you want to ask developers before you start your project and the first is find out what kind of experience they have If they're more experienced it might cost you more if they're less experienced It'll be cheaper and it might be a good learning experience for them But it also could take longer And depending on the situation And how the developers were at Catholic is it might not get done That also can happen with some of the experienced developers too though Find out if they're experienced with WordPress. Are they involved in the community? Have they ever done anything that's similar to the request that you're looking for? Also find out how long the time is going to take get a timeline If you have a close due date as I said before your cost is probably going to be a lot higher But if you have no deadline that project might get put on the back burner by you and or them I recommend getting a timeline and making sure that there's deliverables from both parties Because that shows that you're invested as well as them and it helps both parties try to build that site together And it means that your timeline has a better chance of being met Also find out what kind of support is going to come with this site Is it something where you're just going to have the files handed to you afterwards and you install them? Or are they going to be training you? Are they going to be giving you any sort of like input during the development process? Find out how closely related it's going to be when you're working with this developer And then also find out if they're going to be working on a local site or a dev site Or if they're going to be working and making these changes on your live site If they say they're just going to work on the live site immediately run away You don't want to work with that developer Also find out what their previous work is especially any that might relate to your current project If you see something that you're kind of curious about why they approached it that way Ask them if they can convince you on this is the reason why that means that they probably know what they're talking about Or sometimes they might just be like The client insisted and this is what we ended up with in the end Also find out if they're going to be working from scratch specifically for themes Or if they're going to be using a template If they're doing it from scratch it's going to cost more but it will be custom tailored to your brand And will give you exactly what you need If it's something from a template your turnaround round time might be a lot quicker though So things to just weigh and find out which works best for you And then the last one is do they outsource? Outsourcing it can lower the costs But at the same time It might cause issues because that person is not necessarily doing the work anymore So asking questions do you outsource? If they do outsource find out if they've got like version control going on And if they know if there's a way that they are keeping their code in check So that way someone doesn't overwrite someone else's changes I guess they had a couple more Also find out if they code SEO friendly if your site is responsive If there's browser compatibility You need to make sure that your site is mobile friendly And you need to make sure that you're going to be found So make sure that they understand those things and are willing to integrate that into the theme or plugin Also find out if they offer maintenance plans or if they charge on going for service Find out in advance what those things are so that way you can budget properly Because you don't want to have something where you finish it And they're like okay and to continue support it's now going to be this much per month Find out beforehand so you don't get scared Finally find out how much everything costs Because if you get a quote immediately before they know what the full project is Then that means that they're just grabbing a number off top of their head And it's probably not someone who you want to work with But if you've actually went through and told them what the project is And they've given you detailed information about it Then it might be a safer quote Find out what the cost is going to be if things go bad and you need to terminate a relationship Also find out how much things are going to be if you've got changes that you want to make That are not inside the scope of what the project is And I'm going to tell you a secret now on how much everything should cost for websites And the answer is whatever you get the most value out of If it's something where it's a lower dollar amount but you feel like you've got the value you need It's good if it's something that it's more expensive but you've got what you need It's good Also find out if there's a warranty Find out if they're going to give you money back if something breaks Or if they've got support for bugs that might occur So the best choice for a developer is just like with value There isn't a right answer You've got to find out the budget, you've got to find out the needs of the project And you've got to find out how well you mesh with the person Some are too blunt, others might sweet talk everything to a fault So find out what style fits best with yours And then last thing, make sure you have a contract The contract, it will protect the developer but it will also protect you in case things don't get done So find out which developer gives you the most value for the project So DIY WordPress Whether you're just selecting a theme or some plugins Or if you're a full-on developer, you can have your own WordPress site If you hire a developer to build your site, it can still be DIY Because that's what WordPress is all about It's about giving you the power to make the changes on your site So things to remember though is if that guy, that guy Or this guy can have and build a WordPress website Then so can you I'm Seth Alling, I'm a publisher engineer at Mediavine You can find me online at SethAlling.com or on Twitter at SethAlling