Beginners Cheat Sheet

We have planned a series of presentations that will provide a good foundation for beginners to get started with WordPress. Since beginners and new users may not know which presentations were designed with them in mind, I have put together this list to help you plan your camp schedule.

On Friday morning, Russell Fair will be coordinating a two hour hands-on workshop called, Hello WordPress. If you have a laptop you can sign up here, you will get your own WordPress site to practice on. You will get the overview and by the end of the workshop actually be creating  posts and pages uploading images and other nifty things bloggers do. If you aren’t bringing a laptop or you just need a refresher please attend the beginner session which will be held Saturday morning for an hour, presented by Kathy Drewien. Kathy will walk you through many of the same things covered in Friday’s workshop but without a hands on component. If you don’t have a laptop you might want to go to her presentation.

Bret Phillips will be going over the Mysteries of Pages and Posts which is always somewhat of a conundrum to new users. Some people say, “But, I don’t want to blog”. But then they ask things like, “Where do I input information about my upcoming event?” Or,  “Where do I put my recommended books?” These my friends are often posts. So tune into that talk for more detail.

Bret is also going to do a presentation on Basic Technical Issues. He will cover things such as the nuts and bolts of getting a domain name and what kind of hosting you need and the right ways to install and configure a WordPress site.  If you want to get your own site up and running, don’t miss this one.

WordPress is an awesome place to share your photos and images. When you write a post it is great to include an image that will draw people into reading it. However, new users are often confused by how to handle images. What size should they be? What’s the difference between resolution and pixels? And how do you input images into posts and pages. Kathy Drewien is going to give you what you need to know about using images.

You won’t want to miss Randy Barnes’ presentation, Don’t hack me Bro’. Randy will give beginners and users easy to understand but essential information about how not to mess up your WordPress site. Randy is a hoot and you will learn invaluable info.

I am going to help you figure out just how to pick a theme from all of the many to choose from.  Some are good, others, not so much. Some are good for one thing but not another. And some are a lot easier to use than others.  This is one of the most frustrating, stumbling blocks new WordPress users deal with. How do you know? How do you choose? Where do you start?

Marna Friedman will be telling you There is a Plugin For That. You will learn about using plugins to extend the functionality of your WordPress installation in lots of cool ways.

Do you want to avoid having to get your own hosting account? Do you want to get your site up and running in thirty minutes? Daryl Houston from Automattic will be telling us all about Hassle Free Blogging with WordPress.com. There are a lot of circumstances when WordPress.com is just what the doctor ordered.

There will be a lot of other, more generalized presentations about topics like blogging and search engine optimization that you can fill in with that will appeal across broader user levels, but try and make it to the presentations above if you can.

If you want or need a little help, go find yourself a little one on one attention in our Happiness lounge in room 447.  Our happiness volunteers will be happy to answer your WordPress questions or find someone who can.