WordPress is a free and easy to use content management system (CMS) that is flexible and can be used to build small to large websites. It has a large community for support and over 4,000 free themes and 45,000 plugins available. WordPress provides a powerful and customizable system to create and manage a website through themes, posts, pages, categories and plugins. Setting up and maintaining a WordPress site requires choosing a theme, installing plugins, optimizing for search engines, and regular backups and updates.

1. West High School
4 Nov 2016
By M. Jon Brown
www.journeymacedonia.com

2.  Create Business Plan
◦ Your identity (business name,
trademark, logo, etc.)
◦ What you’re offering
◦ Your target
◦ Marketing strategies
 Perform Reality & Viability Check (profit
margins)
 Secure Financing
 Support of Friends & Family
 Register Domain Name & Obtain Web Host

3.  Is free and easy to learn and use.
 It’s not just for blogging, is very flexible and
can be used for small to large websites
 An enormous support community
◦ Blogs - http://www.wpbeginner.com/
 https://wordpress.org/support/
◦ Word Camps - https://central.wordcamp.org/
 Over 4,000 Themes and over 45,000 plug-ins
are available for free.

4.  Powerful and easy to use Content
Management System (CMS)
 Very customizable and scalable (ramp-up
ability)
 Whether you are only advertising services on
Craig’s List (dog walker, baby sitting) and
need a landing page for potential clients to
get more info on you and your services, or
you want to open a store to sell products and
take credit cards – WordPress can meet your
needs

5. Source: http://websitesetup.org/

6.  Theme – The graphical interface that controls
the presentation (design) of your website/
 Posts –news & information (content) you use to
engage the audience. Posts are dynamic and
can be shared via RSS feeds & social media
◦ Can be tagged and grouped into Categories
◦ Users can leave comments
 Page - For static content such
as “About Us”, “Contact Us”
“Privacy Policy” and etc.

7.  Categories – Used for sorting and grouping
content (posts).
 Keywords – These are what search engines
use to identify your website, what it is about
and plays into how your page is ranked.
 Tags – are internal to your website and allow
for grouping of and finding related material
on your site.
 Plugins – Adds to or controls features on your
website

8. PetServicesIC.com
DogsCats
Goldfish &
Reptiles
Dog
Grooming
Dog
Exercises
Categories
(Static)
Home Page/Index
Sub-categories
(Static)
Dog
Walking
Swimming
Frisbee
Catching
Posts
(Dynamic Content)
About
Us
Page
(Static)

9.  After installing WordPress on your web
domain, before you can add any content –
You will need to choose a theme.
 Before choosing a theme, it’s a great idea to
have site plan depicting how you want your
site displayed and the key features & plugins
you need on your site.
 Browse other websites offering similar
products or services.
◦ What are their +s and –s?
◦ What can you do to stand out?

10.  Free WordPress themes are available at
https://wordpress.org/themes/
 Read the ratings and reviews
 The number of “Active Installs” can be a great
indicator of reliability, support (especially
continued support) and plugins availability.
 Preview the Demo and look for
documentation (done well?) and
support options

11.  Theme must be “Responsive”, seamless
across all platforms – mobile, tablet, PC
 Make sure the theme is optimized for SEO
with headers, alt tags and etc.
 Website speed. Does it load fast?
 Themes with lots of extras you won’t use can
slow down your site
 If a free theme has a premium version that
you like, test out the free
version before paying for
the upgrade.

12.  Keep it simple – Don’t clutter, Less = More
 Make your site easy to navigate and content
easily accessible
 Don’t make forms difficult
 Use fonts that make for easy reading
 Use quality images to enhance visual appeal
or for branding
 It is all about the UX (User Experience).
Put yourself in the shoes of the user.
Is your site intuitive & easy to use?

13.  Beware of installing too many plugins on your
website. Plugins need to be updated and the
more plugins you have installed, the greater
the security risk to your site.
 Plugin Directory -
https://wordpress.org/plugins/
 As with choosing Themes – read the reviews,
check the ratings, number of active
installs, & current compatibility
with WordPress

14.  Akismet
◦ Protects your site’s comments and contact forms from
getting “spammed”. Free for bloggers.
 Contact Form 7
◦ A free plugin that allows you to manage multiple contact
forms
 Dave's WordPress Live Search
◦ Adds "live search" functionality to your WordPress site
 Email Address Encoder
◦ A free and lightweight plugin that protects email
addresses from email-harvesting robots by encoding
them into decimal and hexadecimal entities.

15.  iThemes Security
◦ A great security plugin that is free.
◦ Note: Do not install too many security plugins are your
site. There is a potential for conflict that could result in
the plugins not working and leaving your defenseless
 Jetpack
◦ A free plugin that gives you a centralized dashboard to
manage plugins, and tools on visitor stats, security
services, speeding up images, and ways to get more
traffic
 Mailchimp
◦ Allows you to add subcsribers to your site
 NextGen Gallery
◦ A great free plugin for displaying pictures and
galleries on your site

16.  WooCommerce
◦ a free eCommerce plugin to establish your online
store. Does offer premium services.
 WordPress PopUp
◦ Allows you to create PopUps, targeted marketing
campaigns, keep customers from leaving your site,
and build your mailing list
 Yoast SEO
◦ Hands down, the best onsite SEO plugin.
◦ Free version is extremely useful.

17.  Onsite SEO:
◦ Optimizing your website’s content,
structure, titles, descriptions
and keywords to make your website
search engine friendly.
A great onsite SEO Tool: https://yoast.com/
 Offsite SEO:
◦ Inbound links from External websites
◦ A great offsite SEO Tool
 https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner (offsite)

18.  Social Networking Sites: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest
and etc.
 Efficient Indexing: Google XML Sitemap
 Link Exchange - Exchange links with service-related websites
 Submitting Content to other sites: Write a guest post for another
blog or leave a comment.
 Participate in discussion/message boards.
 YouTube - Create your own YouTube channel and share videos
and reviews of your business
 Classifieds - Advertise your products and/or
services on sites such as Craigslist

19.  After installing WordPress, you will have a default
username of “Admin”.
◦ Hackers are aware of this and they can attempt a brute-
force attack as now they only need to find your password
to gain entry.
◦ You will want to change this username (create another
user) to make it more difficult for hackers. Research
how.
◦ Also, check with your web host to
ensure they minimize login attempts
and if they don’t, install a plug in
that will limit the number of login
attempts.

20.  Get a SSL Certificate – it authenticates the
identity of your site and provides an
encrypted connection between your web
server and your visitors' web browser
 Use RSS feeds – update your content, so that
people can read it in their mailboxes, feed
reader and/or other devices.
 Create an e-mail newsletter list (subscribers)
and regularly (not too frequent) send
out updates and useful information.

21.  Google Analytics
◦ Tracks and reports traffic on your website
◦ A wealth of statistical and demographical info
regarding visitors to your site
◦ https://analytics.google.com/
 Google Search Console
◦ You can check the indexing the status of your
website and optimize visibility. Check for 404
errors and broken links.
◦ https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

22.  Create a Contact Form
◦ Allow users to contact you directly or anonymously
 Always Update
◦ For security purposes – ensure that your WordPress
installation, themes and Plugins are always
updated. Look for the red dots on your dashboard.
 Regularly Backup
◦ Under your web hosting plan, know the capabilities,
limits and prices to backup and restore
your website.

23.  It's not just for blogging
 It’s open source software that is free to use
with free themes and plugins available
 You don‘t need to be a developer
or know how to write code to
use it effectively.