WordPress 101

and the 5 pillars of a successful website

Presented by: Dan Stramer / @danst

About Dan

  • Owner of dmdesign - Webdesign agency
  • Front End Designer and Developer
  • Creating websites since 2000
  • Mentor and taught at Canada Learning Code
  • Member at WP Toronto meetups
  • Father of 3 boys

www.dmdesign.co.il

Heard of WordPress?

Who has ever used it?

Started as a blogging tool in 2003

Powers more than 43% of websites*

https://blog.hubspot.com/website/wordpress-stats

Open source - freely use, copy, study and change the software

NASA, white house, TechCrunch, Ted blog

Which WordPress?

WordPress.com

  • All tech aspects is done for you incl. hosting
  • Limited plugins & Themes
  • No FTP access
  • Limited control
  • Monthly payment to remove ads
  • Great starting point to learn about blogging and editing

A commercial site where you can host your own site for free, but with some limitations.

WordPress.org

  • Download the software
  • install and set up the site on your server
  • Update core, plugins and themes
  • Keep your site secure
  • Full access to code (front + backend)
  • More freedom to code, host and manage

where you can download a copy of the WordPress software for free. There are less
limitations, but more expertise and setup
is required

Which WordPress?

WordPress.org

  • Download the software
  • install and set up the site on your server
  • Update core, plugins and themes
  • Keep your site secure
  • Full access to code (front + backend)
  • More freedom to code, host and manage

where you can download a copy of the WordPress software for free. There are less
limitations, but more expertise and setup
is required

Why WordPress

It's Free

Running your website on Wordpress may incur costs, but the software itself is free

Easy to learn

Managing a WordPress site is
intuitive, making it easy to use + many resources

Secure

WordPress is developed with
security in mind and is battletested.

Powerful

WordPress has a large network of
developers who are constantly
making it better and more
powerful.

Extensible

There are thousands of plugins,
themes, and tools to add
functionality to your Wordpress
site.

SEO friendly

Wordpress is built with SEO in
mind and uses SEO-friendly
permalinks.

Community

Meetups

727 Groups

107 Countries

507,719 Members

WordCamps

More than 40 per year

Endless YouTubes, tutorials, help & resources

wordpress.org > learn

Putting it all together

The 5 Pillars

Content

Design

SEO

Security & Speed

Marketing

Content

Our site's building block

Communication:
Users, Visitors, Stakeholders

Video

Articles

Content - How to

  1. List the 5 most important items of content, rank them from most important to least important.
  2. Have the most important item on your homepage - users allows you 3 seconds to get their attention
  3. Create a google doc with all of your content
  4. Separate the content into 'pages': Homepage, About, Services, Contact
  5. Write for 8th grade
  6. Start with 300-500 words per page
  7. Blog

START!

Design

How well is the site designed?

Color, fonts, layout

Easy navigation, mobile friendly?

UI                UX

SEO -
Search Engine Optimisation

How are you found on the web?

Spider bots scan the web linking between sites 

Great Content

Consistent

Key Phrases

Collaboration

I love speed

So do your users and search engines

Good Neighborhood

Reputation

Security & Speed

My site is my ship

Focus on a few

Marketing

Email marketing

Google My Business

Youtube

Linkedin

Fb / Tw / In / Pi

The 5 Pillars

Content

Design

SEO

Security & Speed

Marketing

Questions?

Thank you!

WordPress 101

By Dan Stramer

WordPress 101

  • 277