Getting Started With WordPress at Evergreen

From Computing

Evergreen uses WordPress MU (Multi User) as our personal website/blogging server.

Getting started with a new web site

• Go to http://blogs.evergreen.edu and click the "create a new blog" link
• Dashboard overview
• change the site's title and subtitle

Settings > General

• Privacy settings - control whether or not search engines will index your site

Writing and Managing your content

• Pages versus Posts
• Creating pages and your site's navigation
  • working with sub-pages
• using the rich text editor
• adding images & media
• controlling commenting & publishing
  • set your comment preferences for all new pages/posts
• creating posts
• editing already existing pages and posts

Design Considerations

• Trying out new Themes

Appearance > Themes

• Customize Your Header Image
  • some themes allow for you to add your own header image

Appearance > Header Image (may only appear if your chosen theme support custom header images)

Important: Find a theme that meets your layout requirements. Note: not all themes support having a static page as the home page.

Set your home page (blog or static)

After you create your site's pages, set your front page display - blog posts or static page.

Settings > Reading > Front page display

Modify Your Sidebar with widgets

Add functionality to your site's sidebar(s)

 Appearance > Widget

• • Note: Not all themes support all widgets

Working with sidebar links

• creating and managing sidebar links
• displaying sidebar link via widgets

Working with categories and tags

primarily used for blogging so may not be applicable for your site

Customize the CSS of your theme with Custom CSS

You can write custom CSS to override the theme's CSS. You'll need to learn a bit about how your theme is structured. One great tool for this is Firefox's Web Developer Toolbar.
Appearance > Custom CSS

Plugins

Plugins add functionality to your site. To use them use must first activate. Some useful plugins include:

• image galleries
• working with tables
• contact forms

Other important stuff

• Copyright issues
• Making Your Website Accessible Review Section 508 guidelines
  • web accessibility tutorial
• contact forms vs. the mailto: link
• requesting additional sites

Additional Resources

• Wordpress Tutorials Please note: some of these tutorials assume you have administrative access to your blog's server. You don't.
• Introduction to CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)