Headstand Media

Nightstand 7 flickr Images - Chris Arndt

A group of 18 gathered at Headstand Media on Thursday, July 31st for a Nightstand event focused on the open source WordPress blog engine and content management system.

After enjoying some conversation and networking time along with some great Chinese-Thai Asian food from Big Bowl, Randal Birkey of Headstand Media asked everyone to share their name and who they worked for. With these general introductions completed, Randy launched into the presentation topic for the evening.

A WordPress Overview

Headstand Media, located in Chicago, has been using WordPress as a blog engine and content management system from our beginning. As we have used it, and witnessed the WordPress upgrades over time, we have become increasingly impressed with the tool as a content management system. We find that it meets most of the CMS needs for most of our customers.

There is a very healthy and growing user and developer community around this tool, with new plugins, themes and features being added on a daily basis.

Here is the outline of content presented by the Headstand Media team of Randy Birkey, Benjamin Nelson and Kyle Williams:

Preparing Your Hosting Account

• Minimum Requirements: a standard UNIX/LINUX server account, with mySQL database access SEE: Hosting WordPress
• Hosting Providers: WordPress Suggestions. Headstand has worked with a number of ISP’s that are WordPress friendly. Here are a few ofr our suggestions:
  • Nexcess
  • BlueHost
  • HostMySite
  • 1and1
• FTP Connection: With settings provided by your ISP, establish a connection between your local PC and the web server your WP site will reside on. Examples: Filezilla, Transmit, Cyberduck, Dreamweaver, GoLive, CuteFTP, and many more.
• Permissions: In some cases, you may need to use tools provided by the ISP to set the permissions correctly for the wp-contents folder. See:

Installing WordPress files on a web server

• Configuring FTP Client: You generally need three settings. The Host (could be an IP address or a URL), The username (provided by your ISP) and the password (provided by your ISP). In some cases you may also need a directory path such as: /public_html See also: Working with FTP Clients
• Uploading: Using your fully configured FTP client software, you upload the core WordPress files to the web server root directory.
• Overview of the WP file and folder structure: The core files/folder structure of WordPress 2.6 is:
  • index.php
  • license.txt
  • readme.html
  • wp-admin (folder)
  • wp-app.php
  • w-atom.php
  • wp-blog-header.php
  • wp-comments-post.php
  • wp-commentsrss2.php
  • wp-config-sample.php
  • wp-content (folder)
  • wp-cron.php
  • wp-feed.php
  • wp-includes (folder)
  • wp-links-opml.php
  • wp-load.php
  • wp-login.php
  • wp-mail.php
  • wp-pass.php
  • wp-rdf.php
  • wp-register.php
  • wp-rss.php
  • wp-rss2.php
  • wp-settings.php
  • wp-trackback.php
  • xmlrpc.php

A good online resource is located here: Getting Started with WordPress

Configuring the WordPress database connection

• mySQL set up: In order to perform the next step, you will first need to set up the mySQL database for your site. Using the “control panel” supplied by your ISP, add a “wordpress” database to your account. In the settings for accessing that new database, create a user account and a password for it.
• wp-config.php file: This file is the most important one to getting your site set up. It must be opened and a number of settings entered into it such as: your wordpress database name, your database user and database password, and several security phases. This file then needs to be renamed wp-config.php and uploaded to the server in the root directory.

The Initial WordPress Admin access and site configuration

• /wp-admin: Most all WordPress sites have the administrative area located in the /wp-admin/ location after the root site URL.
• Settings, Plugins, Users: Once logged in, we recommend that you change the admin password in the “Users” control area, to something secure and one that you can remember. Keep a record of it in a safe place! You also need to make sure the general site settings are configured to your liking.
• Dashboard: Write, Manage, Design, Comments: These are the main tabs you will use for managing your site. Each one is very self-explanatory.
• Here is a good overview of the WordPress Admin Features: http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Features

WordPress Plugins

• How they work: Managing Plugins
• Accessing the WP Plugin Directory - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/
• More Info on Plugins

WordPress Themes

• How they work: Templates
• Accessing the WP Theme Library - http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/
• Custom Themes – How To Create Custom Themes
• Examples of Custom Themes: Southport Grocery & Cafe, Livingstone Corporation

SEO Strengths of WordPress

• Taxonomy: WordPress “forces” you to use logical page organization which also affects your site SEO favorably.
• URL’s: When you select the Day-Name, or Month-Name options in the Permalink settings, your WordPress site will create web-friendly URL’s which will not impeded search engines for indexing the content on your site.
• Title Tags: WordPress also encourages you to enter page title tags that describe the content of each page. This is very helpful for better search engine performance.
• Content Headings: When creating page content, the built-in WP page editing tools allow you to use “heading tags” <h1>, <h2>, etc. for formatting the main content areas of your page. Using these tags are also very important for better search engine performance.
• Tagging: For each post on your site, you can add main topic keywords or “tags” to your site. These become very helpful to people searching your site, and are helpful for better search engine performance.

Other Resources mentioned in the presentation:

• Where to get the WordPress files: www.wordpress.org
• Where to get your feet wet with WordPress for free: www.wordpress.com
• Authorize.net - a payment gateway provider
• Chris Pearson WordPress Themes: www.pearsonified.com
• CubeCart - PHP, mySQL shopping cart system
• osCommerce: another open source shopping cart system

Not Mentioned in the Presentation:

• How do I update or upgrade WordPress when these newer versions come out? Here’s a good resource on How to Upgrade WordPress. It’s really very easy, especially if you make a backup of your existing site first!

Several people mentioned to us afterward that another good followup topic could be how to integrate a shopping cart engine into the WordPress environment - like we did with Southport Grocery & Cafe.

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