 Alright, hello everyone. You are here for WordPress 101. Alright, so let's talk about how you create a website. I like to think of it like an artist and I'm excited that we're doing this flower shop today. So the way an artist works is they take some clay, they start to shape it, and they form their creation. The biggest mistake I see that beginners make is they try to build a website, but there's nothing in there. So if there's nothing in there, you can't create anything. And also, looking at the first slide, take some clay and start to shape it, it's going to look ugly in the beginning. So you're not a failure if you're starting to build your site and it looks ugly because it's going to go through that ugly stage. And beginners often give up because they think, this is a mess, it looks ugly, I can't do it, this isn't for me, maybe I should hire it out. So I just want to let you know if it looks ugly and messy, you're doing the right thing. There are eight main WordPress components, and throughout the day you're going to learn about all of these. I just want to give you a little bit of an intro. Pages and posts. Posts are your blog. Pages are static pages like and about us, and we'll be building that today. The pages and posts are the clay that I've been talking about. So you make pages, you make posts, I know it's sort of a little ephemeral right now. Once you have that, you can create menus. So menus are top navigation, and you'll see that. The media library that stores your images and any PDFs or audios you might have. Widgets, I'll get to that later. Plugins and themes, I'll get to that. And then the customizer, I'll get to that. So I just wanted to point out these are the eight main WordPress components that you need to work with. It's okay if you don't fully understand everything, just kind of ride along with it because the knowledge then comes to you. Right, first I'm going to start with what is a page. So when you first install WordPress, WordPress will give you a sample page and a sample post. So it looks something like this. The way you create a page, this is the inside of WordPress. And a raise of hands, who's created a page before? Just want to get an idea. Okay, about half of the room. This is a screenshot. You come in to the left, on the left, you go to pages, add new. There are different ways to add pages. I always get in the habit of doing it the same way because then it's easier for my brain. You write your headline, title of it, and then you put your content in. Now when you are creating WordPress site, it's okay if you don't have all your words. You can use sample text and I'll show that later. But you want to type something in there. And then you can either save your draft or go ahead and publish it. Well, the great thing about using desktop server is because it's local on your computer, you might as well hit publish. It's going to be easier to work with. One of the mistakes I see beginners make is they create a lot of pages and they're all sitting in draft. And they wonder why they can't see anything. Because if it's in draft, it will not show up. It's as if you're working on it just like what draft says. So you want to definitely go ahead and publish even if you're not ready. The great thing about WordPress is it's forgivable. It's so easy if you make a mistake to fix things. So here's the publishing the page and you'll see the little drop down there. So here is an about us page on a finished WordPress site. So that's a typical about us page. Here's a tip for your about us because I see this mistake a lot. Put your full name if you're creating a site for yourself or for your client. Put the full name of the person because people go to your about us and don't assume folks know your last name. See like you can say see mine says Christina Hills about us. That's also going to help you for search engine optimization having your full name. All right. So what is a post? So who knows what a post is. Not everybody. Most people. So the post the default post when you first install WordPress site is Hello World. So when WordPress installs WordPress is the software that you use to create your website. So it gives you a sample page and a sample post and it just calls it Hello World. The way you create a post. Am I going too fast? No. Okay. If I go too fast. Tell me to slow down creating a post is very similar. There's a post area up here and then you write your title. You put in your content and then you can save your draft or you can publish. With a post post is the blog part. You want to make sure you give your post a category and a tag. So you might be thinking well what category am I supposed to give it? I don't know. It all depends upon your site. So whatever you can think of of your category what your categories might be and tags. So think of it this way. When you open a book and you look at the table of contents. Those are like your categories. So what are the important different sort of sections? So let's say if you're making a cooking website you might have a category for Italian recipes or Chinese recipes or American recipes. So that's what a category would be and then tags are like the index in the back of a book. What you might look up. The thing about WordPress is if you ever don't understand something just keep going because WordPress is very kinesthetic. You have to do it and as you're doing it light bulbs start going off. So just make up a category even if you're not even really sure and the default is uncategorized. But you want to give it some other category so you can easily make one. Again with WordPress you just have to do it. Just start doing it and keep going even if you don't fully understand. So now I'm going to talk about plugins. So what are WordPress plugins? Well plugins are kind of like apps on your phone. So when you get your phone your phone works. But as you add apps to your phone it makes it custom to you things that you like to do. So with WordPress the software comes standard the bare minimum and then WordPress assumes you're going to have one set of plugins. You're going to have another set of plugins. Everyone's going to be a little bit different. So you can sort of mix and match what you want. So here's some examples. Plugins can be fun or functional. So what do I mean by that? Plugins might be something you see on the outside of your site or functional that no one would see but helps the inside. So for example falling snow. Do you ever see that sort of during the holidays people have falling snow? And I like to do that so you go to the site and snow starts falling. So not everybody wants falling snow. So that's why WordPress doesn't have this built in. You see WordPress wants to run as fast as it can. That's why it has the bare minimum. And then you add plugins as you need it. And one of the speakers today is going to be talking more about plugins. The Yoast SEO plugin. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. That's an example of a plugin that you don't see on the outside but helps you rise in the search engines. And how many people have heard of Yoast SEO? Okay, about two thirds of the group. The great thing about Yoast SEO is it helps you become a better writer. And that's what makes it fun. But I don't have time to go into that but just note that it makes you a better writer even if you know nothing about SEO. So plugins are on the inside of WordPress. They have their own area and that's where you go to add plugins. So here's another example. This is Foo Gallery. It's a photo gallery plugin. And I really like this plugin. I learned it from Matt Cromwell. He's one of the other speakers who will be here today. And it just gives this fun way of displaying photos. There are lots of different photo gallery plugins and each person has a different affinity to a different plugin. An under construction plugin. So let's say your site is live on the internet but you need to take it down or you want to change it. I recommend putting up an under construction plugin so that way if anybody comes to the site they can't see it. But you can see your site with an under construction plugin if you log in. So just remember as you're working on your WordPress site when you're logged in you're going to see things differently than the rest of the world. So it's always good to have a second browser. How many people have more than one browser on their computer? Alright so it's good to either have a second browser or log out and look at your site and then log back in. And then another example of a plugin is a contact us form plugin. That's a form plugin. And we have a speaker today who's going to go deeper into contact forms. So how do you find plugins? You go to the WordPress.org directory. That's where I go to look for plugins. So I go to the internet, I go to WordPress.org. If somebody says ooh this is a cool plugin I look it up on the WordPress.org plugin directory. You can find plugins inside of your site as well. I find this easier. So the plugins you see at WordPress.org are the same as the ones you install inside. Alright I've got five more minutes. I'm going to briefly talk about themes and then I'm going to come back for a session just on themes. And that'll be a little bit of a longer session. I'm just trying to give an overview. So what are themes? Themes are the look and feel. And the great thing about WordPress, when it was designed in the old days your design and your content was locked together. So if you wanted to change your look and feel you had to rebuild the whole site. Well the way WordPress is designed is it's separate. So you can change your designs and all your content is still there. Oh I guess that's my last slide. I'm going to be coming back and I'll be talking more. My name is Christina Hills. Here's my contact information. I'll show this again. But I'll be talking more about themes in my theme session. So I guess I'm ending a little bit early. Does anybody have any general questions before we switch? I want to cover it. Okay, no worries. Yes? You can ask it. And I'll tell you, we'll wait till later. The thing about plugins, and I don't have a slide here yet. The thing about plugins is I always get them from inside of WordPress. Any theme you install and any plugin you install from inside of WordPress has already been vetted by the WordPress community. So, but the guy who will be talking about plugins will go deeper into that. But again remember, if there's anything you don't understand, don't think, oh I'm frustrated this isn't for me, I can't do it. Just like let it wash by you and keep going. Because the more you move forward, the more the stuff behind you starts to make more sense. Alright, thank you everyone. Again my name is Christina Hills.