Chapter 3: More Blogging: WordPress Options: Part A

Web 2.0 and Social Media for Business

Roger McHaney, Kansas State University

WordPress Blogs• Powerful tool• Helps a business get its message into the world• Allows business to provide news to its stakeholders• Material accessible to everyone immediately• Material remains in original words of the writer• Some organizations use blogs to communicate press

releases, others use blogs for voice of internal entities such as marketing, research and development, production, or upper management

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WordPress Blogs (con’t)

• Wide variety of blog uses has resulted in the deployment of numerous options and tools

• Community of WordPress users has provided many ways of customizing and organizing blogs

• Because of parallels to traditional press releases and a desire to promote a wider content distribution, a system for blog syndication has been developed

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Why Use WordPress?

http://www.businessesgrow.com/2011/01/05/the-10-best-corporate-blogs-in-the-world

Customization

Earlier we covered basics for obtaining a WordPress blog account, starting a blog, and selecting a theme. The blog can be further customized with options and features specific to the needs of a business.

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Login and Work Behind the Scenes

Tabs on this page provide tools for reading posts written by other WordPress bloggers (e.g. Read Blogs, Freshly Pressed, and Topics). Also, a tab for New Post provides links to information about WordPress and its community of users

WordPress.tv

Default Blog Page

This blog has a theme but no widgets, pages, posts or other customization

Start with Theme Customization

Most themes provide options for customization including selection of a header image, font and style choices, and different ways of arranging the widgets.

Selecting a Theme

Plenty of themes---custom, free, or premium (cost) exist

Why Customize a Theme?Customizing has the direct benefit of making a business site unique. Each WordPress theme may have thousands of adopters. Adding features that further business goals is crucial in creating a unique sense of identity

The Connections theme allows a user to customize the blog header, image, and style. Some themes permit this and others do not. Additional theme customization options may include: background image, background color, header text, font color, and other style choices.

Customizing Selected Theme

The ‘Theme Options’ selection can be found under appearance on the dashboard menu or by using the buttons under ‘managing themes’.

OR

Customize a Theme HeaderSelect the Header page under Appearance. Theme may have pre-installed images. However, for a truly custom appearance, upload a unique image. Investigate a site of open content images (such as CreativeCommons.org or appropriately licensed material at Flickr.com). Or, photos can be taken with a digital camera.

Getting Images at Creative Commons

http://search.creativecommons.org/

Custom Image in HeaderA photo can be added to the blog to create a custom header

Crop Header Image in WordPress

The uploaded image is larger than the header size. WordPress provides a tool to crop it.  After selecting the desired portion, click Crop Header to ensure selected part is displayed on the blog

After Cropping Image

Carefully Choose Header Font Color

The wrong font color can result in words that are not visible on the image

Edit Image Outside WordPress

MS-Paint or other graphic editor can be used to add desired text with more visibility.

Finished Header in Blog

Customizing Background

Navigating to Background under Appearance in the Dashboard provides background options. 

Color Background

Alternate way to customize page background:

Selecting hex color value for solid background. 

Navigate to: Select a Color which opens a color wheel with a large number of choices.

Image Background

Image can be uploaded and used for background

Settings permit it to be tiled or displayed according to particular criteria.

Changes to General SettingsGeneral settings include site title, tag line (the subheading found under the title), language, time zone, date format and more.

Blog Avatar (Blavatar)An icon to represent your blog in people’s browsers and on other Web sites.

Blavatar

End ofChapter 3 Part A

Web 2.0 and Social Media for Business

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Slides Prepared by Professor Roger McHaney Kansas State UniversityTwitter: @mchaneyBlog: http://mchaney.comEmail : mchaney@ksu.edu