wordpress

Widgets

Submitted by Hagen Graf on 28. March 2011 - 19:43

WordPress contains many configurable Widgets.

Akismet

Akismet

Archives

A monthly archive of your site’s posts

Authors

Authors

Blog Stats

Blog Stats

Blog Subscriptions

Add an email signup form to allow people to subscribe to your blog

Box.net file sharing

Box.net file sharing

Calendar

A calendar of your site’s posts

Categories

A list or dropdown of categories

Category Cloud

Category Cloud

Custom Menu

Use this widget to add one of your custom menus as a widget.

del.icio.us

del.icio.us

Gravatar

Insert a Gravatar image

Image

Display an image in your sidebar

Links

Your blogroll

Meta

Log in/out, admin, feed and WordPress links

Pages

Your site’s WordPress Pages

Recent Posts

The most recent posts on your site

RSS

Entries from any RSS or Atom feed

RSS Links

Links to your blog's RSS feeds

Search

A search form for your site

SocialVibe

Get Sponsored. Support a Charity

Tag Cloud

Your most used tags in cloud format

Text

Arbitrary text or HTML

Top Clicks

Top Clicks

Top Posts & Pages

Top Posts & Pages

Top Rated

A list of your top rated posts, pages or comments.

Twitter

Display your tweets from Twitter

 

Creating content

Submitted by Hagen Graf on 28. March 2011 - 16:19

There are many ways to create content.

Content types

There are different content-types available.

Pages

You can create pages. A page is usually created once, is accessible via a menu link, and in the future all you will have to do is change it as you go. It has a static character. For static pages, in contrast to dynamic pages, like articles, the creation date and author do not really matter. Static pages are usually accessible via a menu link whereas dynamic pages can be accessed through lists.

Articles

You can create articles which will appear on the frontpage. The content of an article can be nearly everything e.g. a press release or a blog entry and it has a dynamic character.

Comments

Everyone can create comments. If a guest comments on a post, he'll get the message

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

The administrator is noticed by email and has to approve the comment. See the text, the WordPress system will send below

A new comment on the post "This is my first post" is waiting for your approval
http://cocoateclass.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/this-is-my-first-post/

Author : Toni Test (IP: 109.210.145.237 , AMontpellier-551-1-138-237.w109-210.abo.wanadoo.fr)
E-mail : toni@cocoate.com
URL    : 
Whois  : http://whois.arin.net/rest/ip/109.210.145.237
Comment: 
This is a comment from a visitor

Approve it: http://cocoateclass.wordpress.com/wp-admin/comment.php?action=approve&c=2
Trash it: http://cocoateclass.wordpress.com/wp-admin/comment.php?action=trash&c=2
Spam it: http://cocoateclass.wordpress.com/wp-admin/comment.php?action=spam&c=2
Currently 1 comment is waiting for approval. Please visit the moderation panel:
http://cocoateclass.wordpress.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php?comment_status=moderated

Links

You can create Links and show them in a widget. These links can be a blogroll or other useful combination of links

Categories/Tags

Create categories and tags to structure your content. WordPress pages and articles can be categorized. Generally spoken, categorization is the process of recognizing, differentiating and understanding something through abstraction. This may sound rather complicated but proves very useful when managing several articles. WordPress offers the possibility of creating as many categories as you wish. It is possible to build nested categories and an article can be related to one of these categories.

Content

The WYSIWIG editor of WordPress is intuitive and more or less self explaning. Use the inbuild help (Figure 1).

Editor Help

Figure 1: Editor Help

Poll

Integrate a poll. WordPress.com is connected to the PollDaddy

Images/Slideshow

WordPress.com allows to upload images and insert them as a single image or as a slideshow

Embedded Videos

You can embed Videos from YouTube, Google, DailyMotion and Vimeo

WordPress.com

Submitted by Hagen Graf on 28. March 2011 - 14:50

There a many possibilities to use the WordPress software. The best example of a software as a service is WordPress.com.

You can use it for your blog or you can use it too for your school website and/or for classes and projects. One of the biggest problems for smaller projects and teachers in schools are often the installation and maintenance of applications like WordPress. On WordPress.com you can create a blog for free. Beside the truely amazing and stunning features, there are a few limitations.

  • The domain name has to be http://[your choice].wordpress.com.
  • Storage is limited to 3.0 GB.
  • No custom CSS, video and mp3 upload is allowed.
  • The amount of users is limited to 35 users per blog.
  • Advertisements (try to use AdBlocker).

You can pay a small amount a year to enhance your blog if you need the missing features mentioned above. You'll find an overview of the products on http://en.wordpress.com/products/. 

 

A Class Blog

Submitted by Hagen Graf on 28. March 2011 - 10:18

A class blog is a blog, which is created by the teacher and used by teachers, students and hopefully parents. Every participant of a Class Blog created on WordPress.com needs an user account.

Step 1 - Teacher's WordPress.com account

Sign up for a WordPress.com account or log in with your existing account (Figure 1).

Create a WordPress Account

Figure 1: WordPress Sign up

Step 2 - Creation of the 'Class Blog'

Register a new blog, e.g. cocoate-class.wordpress.com (Figure 2).

Register a New Blog

Figure 2: WordPress - New Blog

Step 3 - General Settings

Edit the general settings (http://[your_domain_name]/wp-admin/options-general.php) and choose

  • Site Title
  • Tagline:
  • Date/Time Format:
  • Language
  • Blog picture:

Configure your Settings

Figure 3: WordPress - General Settings

Step 4 - The about page

Edit the existing 'About' page and describe your class blog project. Create pages for Blogging Rules and Guidelines or link to existing pages on your school website.

Step 5 - The first entry

Say hello to the world. WordPress already provides already a 'Hello World' post at your Frontpage. Edit it concerning to your needs (Figure 4).

Class Blog

Figure 4: WordPress - First entry

Step 6 - Appearance of your Class Blog

Your Class Blog has to look nice, so go to the Dashboard -> Appearance and choose a theme you like. I like the standard theme Twenty Ten and I simply upload another Header picture (Figure 5).

Header Picture

Figure 5: WordPress - Header

In the Widget area I drag the Author Grid Widget into the Primary Widget Area (Figure 6).

Widgets

Figure 6: WordPress - Additional Widgets

The result of our customization looks like this. If you click on an 'Authors' Image, you'll see the articles of this person (Figure 7).

All Articles of a User

Figure 7: WordPress - Class Blog

Step 7 - Categorization

Create categories for your special purpose, e.g. Homework and Events. Every article can be assigned to one or more categories. The categorie widget will show the amount of articles in every category

Step 8 - Add others users (students, parents)

Now you can add participants to your blog. For this action you need the email address of that person. If the email address is related to an existing WordPress Account, it will be assigned to your Class Blog. If not, you have to invite the person (Figure 8). WordPress.com will send an email and the person has to sign up. In both cases you have to grant permissions to the new participant. You have four roles:

  1. Administrator
    An administrator has full and complete ownership of a blog, and can do absolutely everything. This person has complete power over posts/pages, comments, settings, theme choice, import, users – the whole shebang. Nothing is off-limits, including deleting the entire blog. Only one administrator per blog is recommended!
  2. Editor
    An editor can publish, edit, and delete any posts/pages, moderate comments, manage categories, manage tags, manage links and upload files/images.
  3. Author
    An author can edit, publish and delete their posts, as well as upload files/images.
  4. Contributor
    A contributor can edit their posts but cannot publish them. When a contributor creates a post, it will need to be submitted to an administrator for review. Once a contributor’s post is approved by an administrator and published, however, it may no longer be edited by the contributor. A contributor does not have the ability to upload files/images.

Invite users

Figure 3: WordPress - Invite your class

Congratulation

You are done, the structure is ready to use.

Screencasts, Tutorials, Videos

Submitted by Hagen Graf on 24. March 2011 - 14:15

TMVR Video SwitchJust a small wrap-up on our screencast activities.

I just finished the recordings for a German Joomla! 1.6 screencasts DVD (Video Training for Pearson). I'll also record a German Drupal 7 screencasts DVD (video2brain) in a few weeks (Therefore I am still looking for suggestions). My goal is to offer as many screencasts as possible for free. Free in the sense as I did with the Joomla! 1.6 Beginner's Guide book. One of the biggest problems for me is ... how to survive using this approach? :) I have no solutions at the moment but Flattr, the Joomla! 1.6 Beginner's Guide as a printed book and paid download and a few adsense banners on cocoate. So, it's up to you whether this will work or not.

droopress #013 - Always Together?

Submitted by Hagen Graf on 15. February 2011 - 9:00

20100424 Rebuilding Together 207Larry Garfield wrote an interesting article overview about Drupal's ladder of engagement. The short version is

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

I agree 100% on his article and it inspired me for this issue. Annoyingly, you can use this quote for nearly every strategy where people are involved. I think the right mix is important. Sometimes you have to go fast, sometimes you have to stop and think about your behaviour and sometimes you have to go together.

#droopress 012 - All Systems Are Normal

Submitted by Hagen Graf on 8. February 2011 - 9:00

Drupal Dev Days 2011 @ BruxellesWhile people start using Drupal 7 and Joomla! 1.6 for new projects and celebrated two big events in Europe this weekend, WordPress is a bit late with its 3.1 release. They released rc3 two weeks ago and furthermore they had to step back and dropped the AJAX list table which was one of the shiny new features. Removing a feature like this in release candidate 3 does not happen that often.

In Brussels, Belgium at DrupalDevDays (> 400 attendees) the atmosphere was fantastic and after more than 60 sessions (session plan - pdf 460 kb) they produced the strangest group photo ever. Unfortunately, I could not be there and there was no live stream, so I watched the twitter stream. Most tweets mentioned Robert Douglass' session about selling code in the droopie app stores, one of mortendk's legendary sessions about designer vs. developer - the eternal struggle of ego tripping, the lack of bigger coffee cups and shiny new drupal shoes.

droopress #011 - App stores

Submitted by Hagen Graf on 1. February 2011 - 9:00

When I hear the word "App store", I think of Apple's App store for iOs devices and now, recently, the Mac App store for Mac OS X. Both stores allow users like me to browse, download and install applications. Depending on the application, they are available either free, or at a cost. Thirty percent of revenues from the store go instantly to Apple, and the other 70% go to the seller of the application.

When I look at WordPress, Drupal and Joomla!, I usually do not think in terms of 'applications' to enhance the possibilities of the systems. In WordPress, I think of plugins. In Joomla!, I think of extensions, and in Drupal, of modules.

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