wpscreencasts is a video tutorial site designed to familiarize beginners with the WordPress interface.
Topics covered include familiarizing yourself with the dashboard, learning how to use the wysiwyg editor, and management of comments.
The tutorials do not cover more advanced topics such as plugin development or theme design. They are hoping to cover installation soon. I really hope they do – we need video tutorials on that topic.
This photo is of my friend Stan. At first, you might look at his t-shirt and think it means something crude. But, if you knew Stan, you wouldn’t think that. Stan is the best listener, the most positive, one of the happiest people I know. What’s for rent by the hour are his listening skills, and he won’t even charge you. Actually, he might even give you free coffee.
Stan works at my favorite coffee shop. I first got to know him last winter when I was going through the hardest part of my life that I’ve had so far. I was floundering, trying to get through each day and I’m sure I looked miserable. I would stop in to get coffee between work and picking up my daughter. Stan looked at me one day, pulled me aside, and started talking to me. At that point I didn’t really know him – I just knew he was one of the guys who worked there. He told me that it would get better. And he listened. I told him everything. And he listened.
Ok – this week I have a links covering plugins, turning 40, a use of social media, a great contest for charity, some SEO, a cheat sheet, and (Anti) Social Updates.
Continue …
Do you read the instructions when putting together a bookshelf, installing a new WordPress theme, putting together a new Playmobil set, or when installing a plugin for your blog?
I am interested in how people do things – do you follow the step by step instructions? Or do you dive in and figure it out through trial and error?
The reason I ask is that recently I helped a couple of people with problems they were having with their WordPress themes. The issues were related to the themes use of custom fields. If the custom fields were not used correctly then the main page content wouldn’t look right.
Earlier this week I discussed the Thumbnails for Excerpts Plugin, which adds thumbnails to the excerpts in all of your archives.
Today I want to discuss an alternative that doesn’t require additional plugins. This is the Excerpts field on your Write > Post page. What? What Excerpts Field? Kim, what are you talking about?
Go to Write > Post and scroll down to the “Advanced Options” section near the bottom. One of the areas is called Excerpts and is just a blank field (that is way too small but that’s another topic). The description says, “Excerpts are optional hand-crafted summaries of your content. You can use them in your template”. Umm … ok. What this means is that whatever you write in this field will replace the default excerpts used by WordPress.
If you use excerpts for your archives, and most templates do, your custom content will appear when you use this field.
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