Classes:

Wordpress

This is the page for the Coding by Hand Class at 3rdWard
Shortcuts: Class Description 1st Session 2nd Session 3rd Session 4th Session

Course Description

In this class, students will learn how to get a website up and running without any knowledge of coding!

This class is perfect for artists, designers, filmmakers or galleries wanting to put together a portfolio site, small entrepreneurs looking to develop a respectable web presence, bands or labels who want to feature their music, and individuals who just want a general purpose site. During our class sessions we’ll make a fully functional site that will include text, images, videos, music, a blog and more. Your site will have an easy to use content management system and we’ll be using non-proprietary open source software (free to use and socially progressive!). We will be covering how to best plan a site, publishing using Wordpress, and how themes, plugins, and widgets work.

Why Open Source?

The open source movement is based on a methodology of accessibility, both of products and of ideas. Basically, open source is code for “free”. Besides being free, though, open source software is constantly being updated and improved, edited and streamlined. The development team is not restricted to the number of folks a company is willing to hire, but rather only by the number of dedicated users who are skilled enough to make improvements. As a result, open source software is frequently better functioning, and if not, sometimes easier to get support for, than its paid-counterparts.

what will we learn in these 6 weeks?
- how to install, design and operate our own site
- how to use WordPress to power our site
- how to Upload/download things from our site
- a little HTML
- a little CSS
- maybe even a tiny bit of PHP
what tools will we be using?
- what is Open Source software?
- What is WordPress?
- What are the advantages of working with WP
- Cyberduck, our trusty ftp client.
- Smultron, so that we can edit code.

1st Session

the main goal of this class is to get our software up and running so as to be ready to start putting content in our site.

First steps to having our own website

Hosting and domain registration explained
- Hosting/registration options
  - domainsvision.com
  - dreamhost.com
  - other hosts
what if i don’t want to get my own hosting?
- working with worpress.com
  - pros:
    - free to use
    - you don’t have to install anything
  - cons:
    - they run google ads on yr site unless you upgrade ($30 a year)
    - if you want custom css, it’s $15 a year
    - not your own domain name unless you have a domain registered already and want to pay $15/year
    - you will not be abl to install plugins
    - your theme selection will be v. limited
    - your site will look like a blog

Planning our site

Making a Sitemap
organizing our assets

Installing worpress

how to install wordpress:
source material: http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress

choosing a theme

a theme determines what your site looks like:
source material: http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Theme

resources:
As Great as the Theme Repository at Wordpress.org is, it is hard sometimes to find the theme you want, so here are a couple of sites where you can find themes:

at the wordpress site:
other sources:
Amazing WordPress Themes
THemes at Rock Kitty
Theme Lab (they also have some nice tutorials)

Due for next week:

Bring a detailed site map, and have your theme chosen.
see the example below. it doesn’t have to look that pretty, and you can ignore the specs part, but use it as a guide. you can enlarge it by clicking on it.

2nd Session

We’ll be using most of the class to work on our sites as they are, remember that we want an example of every page on our site created.
then, for now let’s be content with putting the content in there, we’ll get everything looking better in due time.

we’ll move in to next week’s assignment:
making a sample page of each section of our site

optimizing images using photoshop:
Tutorial: http://inobscuro.com/tutorials/read/35/

Uploading images to our site