Get your hands dirty and build your own WordPress website. 9 February 2013

• DATE: Saturday 9 February
• TIME: 9am to 5pm
• VENUE: Queensland University of Technology, Gardens Point Campus
• REGISTRATION: Sixth New Librarians’ Symposium
• DESCRIPTION:
  • One of the best ways to show a potential employer that you understand about online identity management and that you can technically create a web presence is to build your own professional ‘home’ site. To achieve this is simple – buy web hosting and install WordPress. Participants have homework to do before the workshop – buy hosting at bluehost.com and choose a domain name. The setup will cost around $110 up front. Instructions will be provided, but it is essential to complete this a couple of days before the workshop.
  • By the end of this workshop you will have built an attractive, elegant and well-organised home site. You will understand more about the settings you need to adjust when installing WordPress, how to make the site look good using themes, how to make it do more by using plugins and how to add bling with widgets.

Participants must do this before the worshop

1. Decide on a domain name that is available. Do not purchase this, as you will buy it as part of your web hosting. Nameboy.com is a great tool for selecting an available domain.

2. Buy web hosting at bluehost.com. When you do this, you will register your domain name through them. You will need to pay for a year of hosting using a credit card. This will cost a little over $80.

3. Log in to your account and look at the Control Panel (CPanel). Scroll down to “Files”, click on “File Manager”, select “Home Directory” and look at the files that are there. You cannot break anything if you just look. Bring your login and password to the workshop.

4. Go to Akismet.com and register for a Personal API key so that you can add spam protection when you set up your blog. You do not have to pay for the key. Bring the key with you when you come to the workshop.

5. Complete the 5 minute survey so I can better tailor the workshop to you. Go to the NLS6 WordPress Workshop survey . (After completing the workshop you will be able to make something like this).

Optional things to bring that will make it much better

We are building a “my home on the web” site that you can use as an online portfolio. Have a look at kathryngreenhill.com for an example of what I am talking about. You will learn a lot about how to use WordPress for other types of sites too.

1. Create a gmail account for your site if you do not want to use your primary email account. Have set up a redirect from that account to your primary email account.

2. If you want to import content from an existing blog on anther platform, instructions about the file you need are here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Importing_Content . Don’t panic at the amount of detail, just scroll down to the name of the blogging platform you have been using.

3. Bring along a 250 x 250 pixel profile image of yourself in .png or .jpeg format

4. For your “ABOUT” page write a paragraph explaining who you are and why you have a personal site.

5. Work out what pages you want on your site and bring along some preliminary content. Typical types of pages are:
* My blog
* Presentations
* Writing
* Professional
* Contact

6. Have the links to your presence on social media sites so that you can easily add them to your contact page

7. If you want some homework and to preview what we will be doing, check out WordPress.org’s “First Steps” page: http://codex.wordpress.org/First_Steps_With_WordPress . We will be covering most of this in the workshop, however.