A Beginners Workshop for WordPress

A recent Learning Technology Institute workshop, WordPress Basics, supplemented Celebrate Learning Weeks’ array of events by providing faculty and staff with a useful overview of the web publishing platform, WordPress.  The hands-on workshop was intended for beginners, offering individuals of varying levels a concise overview of WordPress’ rich set of features.

WordPress is a free publishing platform that can be used to design blogs, as well as websites. Customizable, open source, and easy to manoeuvre, this platform is the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world. Because of the flexibility and ease of use of this platform, the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology decided to provide a beginners workshop for WordPress. Workshop facilitators Catherine Paul and Emily Renoe took the group through an array of WordPress features, provided support for the hands-on component, and brought their energy and expertise to this useful workshop.

This workshop was a great resource for individuals interested in WordPress as a platform for designing their blogs. It started with a friendly and comfortable roundtable introduction which highlighted the diversity of fields and departments that the participants came from. After encouragement to do some self reflection, the participants outlined the purpose of their site they are hoping to design, why they wanted a WordPress site and what they hoped to accomplish. This reflective activity proved useful in directing the focus of the workshop and ensuring each participant left with a clearer understanding of what they want. The exercise showed the diversity in potential uses for WordPress as a platform for web spaces. Some examples given were to use WordPress as a secure course site, a supplement to a company’s official website, a document repository, and as a centralized location for a research group to share and build upon ideas. The possibilities are limitless.

Employing WordPress at UBC is in the pilot phase, with this being the first ever workshop offering assistance for faculty and staff. The Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology currently hosts the UBC Blogs platform using WordPress Multi-User, and despite being in its early stages, WordPress is already being used effectively at UBC. The course, ETEC 522: Ventures in Learning Technology has designed a web space for students which allow them to navigate through course content and modules on static pages. By utilizing categories connected to postings, ETEC 522 has postings show up on the front page, with the most recent at the top, highlighting to students the most recent contribution to discussions.

A second example of WordPress use at UBC is with the Global Citizenship ToolBook. The ToolBook actually started out as a printed book and then the content was transferred directly onto a blog using the WordPress platform to create an online version. The content is static, so nothing changes except the administrators’ posts which are funnelled to a particular page.

After introductions all around and a useful run through of current examples on campus, the hands-on activities commenced. Using UBC Blogs, participants signed in using their CWL login. From here participants got to witness and use the numerous features available to design a website through WordPress; creating a new page or post, trying their hand at inserting images and media, and customizing their web space with themes and widgets.

An interesting distinction between pages and posts was shared by the facilitators. Pages are static locations on your site. They are always in the same place with the same content; for example, a home page. Posts include dynamic content that can be filtered and funnelled in different ways. These posts show up under the categories feature that you can be employed to organize site content. Categories can be synonymous to grocery store isles; dairy, vegetables, or beauty.  They are general categories that do not change and provide a general heading in which specific goods are filed under. The same goes for categories on WordPress; by pressing the ‘add new category’ feature, you can create categories that will be the main topics you think you will be writing about frequently on your site.  This aids in organizing the posts over time and makes it easier for viewers to find the information.

Emily and Catherine provided support as participants learned to upload images and facilitated a discussion on WordPress’ privacy settings.  Inserting images into a post or page proved to be as easy as 1, 2, 3. This is a great way to add dimension and personality to your page. Privacy settings were a hot topic with the group, who were eager to understand the way in which they could share their web spaces with others. WordPress offers 5 privacy options for blog visibility, ranging from complete accessibility for anyone on the web to complete privacy so that only administrators can view the site.

The workshop ended on a high note with an overview of widgets and themes, and how they can be used to create a dynamic page and alter the look and feel of your site. Widgets are little tools that can be used on sidebars of websites. These are found under the heading ‘Appearance’ and include: archives, calendar, categories, content licence, and pages, to name a few. By dragging them to the sidebar area, you are putting them onto your site’s sidebar. A word of caution from the facilitators highlighted that when adding a widget it removes previous tools that were there, so be sure to re-add them if needed.

The Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology is hoping to offer a follow up session to this workshop in the new year, so stay posted for an addition to this first ever WordPress Basics!

For additional information on how to design your own website using Word Press, please see the following:

WordPress.tv is your Visual Resource for all things WordPress. Click here for extensive and detailed information on WordPress and tutorial videos for specific assistance.

For useful and easy to follow blog support, you can also visit www.blogs.ubc.ca/eportfolio02.