Setting up The WordPress CMS

INTRODUCTION

“Once you come up with a premise, you have to work out how it all happened. It’s a bit like coming up with a spectacular roof design first. Before you can get it up there, you need to build a solid foundation and supporting structure.” –Linwood Barclay[i]

We will go over the administration login for the first time. We will then discuss permalinks and the importance of setting them up right the first time. User management is a very important feature of the CMS and assigning roles is very significant to the smooth operation of a website. Security is the very vital when it comes to website strategy and utilizing other peoples talents. You will learn to manage users quickly and efficiently within the CMS. Themes and layout is a feature that should be used prudently. We will discuss the benefits of viewing “Free Themes” as opposed to actually using them. The middle of our class will be focused on “Search Engine Optimization” and how the use of tags will optimize the website in this way. Finally we will look at the mobilization of your website and why it’s important to load quickly on mobile devices and how to do it.

CONTENT MANAGMEMENT SYSTEMS

As discussedin the previous class CMS or Content Management Systemsare by far the most efficient way to set up an online presence. In order to do this correctly the first time there are some steps that you need to follow. In the last lesson we left off with the logging into the WordPress dashboard. We shall continue from there.

Administration

When you log into the dashboard for the first time the first thing that you want to do is change the password to something that you will remember or put it in a safe place where you know where it is.

Step #1

You want to log into the dashboard with the temporary password that was given to you. If the username was “admin” then create a whole new Administrator profile. You can do this in the “users” tab on the dashboard. If your username is not admin the skip this part of the instructions.

1. On the dashboard go to the “Users” tab on the left.
2. Click the “Add New User” and fill out all the information.
   1. Important! Make sure that you give yourself Administration role!
   2. You may have to use a different  email address temporarily during this process.

Changing the password

1. Go to the Dashboard to the “Users” tab on the left lower part of the screen.
2. Click on “All users”
3. Click on your username.
   1. Scroll down and enter your new password twice in the two boxes provided.

Permalinks

Permalinks are a permanent link to someplace on your website. This could be either to a page, post, category, tag or even a media file. Permalinks can be changed but it is highly recommended that you do NOT do it on an established website. Permalink structure depends on what business or service that you offer. On a CMS like WordPress the permalink structure is easy to set up. However there is nothing easy about the technology that goes into making it easy for the user.

What is a permalink?

Permalinks come from the word “permanent” which means it is something that should not be changed after it is set up. It’s kind of like part of the foundation for your website. You will build and link to these URL’s as your website grows. In the end there will be thousands of links.

Can Permalinks be changed?

Yes, permalinks can be changed and like discussed before you want to set these up when you first set up your site. You would also consider changing permalinks if the structure of them is terrible for your line of work. In the WordPress CMS go to “Settings” then follow the following steps.

1. Click Permalinks
2. Select a setting
3. Then save your changes!

If you want to customize your permalinks in WordPress it is easy to do so in the WordPress CMS. Reference the WordPress codex for what is available.[ii] Here we have many options they are described in the bullet list below to show structured tags.

• %year%

o   The year of the post, four digits, for example 2004

•  %monthnum%

o   Month of the year, for example 05

•  %day%

o   Day of the month, for example 28

•  %hour%

o   Hour of the day, for example 15

•  %minute%

o   Minute of the hour, for example 43

•  %second%

o   Second of the minute, for example 33

•  %post_id%

o   The unique ID # of the post, for example 423

•  %postname%

o   A sanitized version of the title of the post (post slug field on Edit Post/Page panel). So “This Is A Great Post!” becomes this-is-a-great-post in the URI.

•  %category%

o   A sanitized version of the category name (category slug field on New/Edit Category panel). Nested sub-categories appear as nested directories in the URI.

•  %author%

o   A sanitized version of the author name.

You can use a combination of these structured tags you just have to remember to separate them with a forward slash “/”. Here is an example.

•  http://a1websitepro.com/ %postname%/%author%

If you are unsure how to set the permalink structure the best setting is “Post Name” in the WordPress CMS.

What if I need to change permalinks on an established website?

If you must change permalink structure on a website then you will have to incorporate 301 redirects to avoid 404 errors. If you have thousands of pages this will be very time consuming because you will have to know the name of the original URL and 301 direct that to the new URL. A 301 redirect command is a command that tells search engines that the webpage has been permanently moved.[iii]

User Management

User management on a WordPress CMS is one of the easiest ones to implement. To understand what role to assign to a user we must understand the permissions. When signing up a user you must assign permissions that have different kinds of authority. Here are the different roles out of the box in a WordPress CMS.

An administrator owns the site. There is also a role called super administrators for webmaster that have several website. For all intents and purposes of this site we are only concentrating on the 5 main roles. All administrators have the following capabilities:

• activate_plugins
• delete_others_pages
• delete_others_posts
• delete_pages
• delete_plugins
• delete_posts
• delete_private_pages
• delete_private_posts
• delete_published_pages
• delete_published_posts
• edit_dashboard
• edit_files
• edit_others_pages
• edit_others_posts
• edit_pages
• edit_posts
• edit_private_pages
• edit_private_posts
• edit_published_pages
• edit_published_posts
• edit_theme_options
• export
• import
• list_users
• manage_categories
• manage_links
• manage_options
• moderate_comments
• promote_users
• publish_pages
• publish_posts
• read_private_pages
• read_private_posts
• read
• remove_users
• switch_themes
• upload_files
• create_product

Additional Admin Capabilities

• update_core
• update_plugins
• update_themes
• install_plugins
• install_themes
• delete_themes
• edit_plugins
• edit_themes
• edit_users
• create_users
• delete_users
• unfiltered_html

An editor is someone that you trust completely with the content of your website. They have the authority to make and edit posts and pages everywhere on the site. Here are the complete list of  editor capabilities.

• delete_others_pages
• delete_others_posts
• delete_pages
• delete_posts
• delete_private_pages
• delete_private_posts
• delete_published_pages
• delete_published_posts
• edit_others_pages
• edit_others_posts
• edit_pages
• edit_posts
• edit_private_pages
• edit_private_posts
• edit_published_pages
• edit_published_posts
• manage_categories
• manage_links
• moderate_comments
• publish_pages
• publish_posts
• read
• read_private_pages
• read_private_posts
• unfiltered_html
• upload_files

An author is someone who has the authority to make, edit and delete their own posts. They cannot edit any one else’s posts. Here is a complete list of an author’s authority.

• delete_posts
• delete_published_posts
• edit_posts
• edit_published_posts
• publish_posts
• read
• upload_files

A Contributor can make post and delete or edit their own posts. They do not have the ability to publish posts. You would give this role to someone that is helping you make posts to your website that is new to your business. You as the administrator would have to approve their posts before they go live.

• delete_posts
• edit_posts
• read

Subscriber this is someone that has a profile on your website. All they can do is make a profile in the dashboard. You would assign this role to newbies and possibly if you have a store to your customers.

• read

Themes

Themes are templates within the WordPress CMS. They control the look of your website, in fact the entire layout on the front end. Themes can contain functions that you see in the dashboard as well. A theme will determine the layout of the site like:

1. Sidebars
2. Headers
3. Footers
4. Fonts
   1. Color
   2. Style
   3. Size
5. Picture sizes
6. Codes for search engines

Themes in the WordPress CMS on an Linux/Apache server consist of files made up of:

1. Html
2. PHP
3. CSS
4. Javascript
5. Flash

They also utilize object oriented programming, jQuery, Ajax and the MySQL database. There are also other versions of the software for .asp application and more but we are going to concentrate on open source applications.

Installation

There are 2 ways to install a theme. One is from the WordPress bank of themes and the other way is to upload them in a .zip file format. Here are the steps for the two different methods.

From the WordPress Bank of Themes

1. Go to the dashboard
2. Click “Appearance”
3. Click “Themes”
   1. Here you will see the list of themes that are installed already on your server.
   2. You can preview these themes by hovering your mouse over an icon and click “preview”
   3. You can then customize and activate the theme by clicking the appropriate buttons.
4. Click the “Search” link.
5. Type in a keyword or select from the available tic boxes for the style you are interested in.
6. When the results appear you can preview the themes.
7. You can then choose to install the ones that you are interested in.

Free Themes

Free themes are nice to look at to get ideas off of or install in a site that you are just testing out for the first time. They are not recommended for sites containing confidential information. Since these themes are free no one has to take responsibility for the security risks associated with them. Many people have been hacked while using the free themes that are offered from the WordPress bank of themes.

Custom or Premium Themes

If you have a theme custom built or buy a premium theme then the author of that theme shares in the responsibility of the security risks. This does not mean that the developer of the theme shares complete responsibility since you still have the ability to install malicious plugins. However having a theme custom made or buying a premium theme you have the confidence that the author did not put anything malicious in there to destroy the theme. That would only make them look bad and make them liable if there are any malicious scripts installed. By far buying a premium theme or having a custom theme made is the best way to go when considering a layout change in a WordPress CMS.

To install a custom or premium theme follow these steps:

1. Download the theme from where you bought it
2. Go to your dashboard
3. Click “Appearance”
4. Click “Themes”
5. You will see a link at the top called “Upload” select it.
6. Browse for the file on your computer and select it.
7. Click the “Upload” button.
8. You will see your theme installed.
   1. If you theme did not install properly then contact the developer.
9. Now you can preview and activate the theme by clicking the “Preview” link under the icon of the theme.

 References

[i] http://linwoodbarclay.com/

[ii] http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

[iii] 301 redirects are particularly useful in the following circumstances:

• You’ve moved your site to a new domain, and you want to make the transition as seamless as possible.
• People access your site through several different URLs. If, for example, your home page can be reached in multiple ways – for instance, http://example.com/home, http://home.example.com, or http://www.example.com – it’s a good idea to pick one of those URLs as your preferred (canonical) destination, and use 301 redirects to send traffic from the other URLs to your preferred URL. You can also use Webmaster Tools to set your preferred domain.
• You’re merging two websites and want to make sure that links to outdated URLs are redirected to the correct pages.