Wordpress Presentation

WordPress.com A Blogging Application Kay Powell, M.S., M.B.A. University of North Dakota HON 392: Spring 2008 What is a Blog? According TO YOUR BOOK:  Merriam Webster: “a Web site that contains an on-line personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks”  New entry in dictionary in 2005  “Weblog”-shorted to “blog”  A virtual free press (or people with Internet access) Wordpress.com  “WordPress.com is brought to you by some of the same folks who work on the open source blogging software available at WordPress.org. Open source WordPress has been incredibly successful and risen from a handful of users to the most-used blog tool in its category.”  We’re a bit of an underdog, as there are much larger hosted blogging services such as Blogger or Typepad that have been out for years, but when WordPress.org got started people said the blog software market was saturated and there wasn’t room for anything new. (The big players then were Greymatter and Movable Type.) We think we have something unique to bring to the table.” http://wordpress.com/about/ What does WordPress say about Blogging? Many blogs focus on a particular topic, such as web design, home staging, sports, or mobile technology. Some are more eclectic, presenting links to all types of other sites. And others are more like personal journals, presenting the author's daily life and thoughts. Generally speaking (although there are exceptions), blogs tend to have a few things in common:  A main content area with articles listed chronologically, newest on top. Often, the articles are organized into categories.  An archive of older articles.  A way for people to leave comments about the articles.  A list of links to other related sites, sometimes called a "blogroll.”  One or more "feeds" like RSS, Atom or RDF files. http://codex.wordpress.org/Introduction_to_Blogging#What_is_a_.22blog.22.3F Well then, what’s a “feed”? Something we will get into class more later, but know for now: “A Feed is a function of special software that allows "Feedreaders" to access a site automatically looking for new content and then post updates about that new content to another site. This provides a way for users to keep up with the latest and hottest information posted on different blogging sites… Some Feeds include RSS (alternately defined as "Rich Site Summary" or "Really Simple Syndication"), Atom or RDF files.” http://codex.wordpress.org/Introduction_to_Blogging#Feeds What do you do with it? E-mail and username  Choose theme  Submit posts:  • Thoughts • Links • Video • Conversations Our Class Blog www.undhon392.wordpress.com Other types on WordPress   http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/ http://worldsofwordcraft.wordpress.com/   http://truthspace.wordpress.com/ http://waltzingaustralia.wordpress.com/ http://parallelnormal.com/  http://oemar.wordpress.com/   http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/ Why WordPress?         Themes Tag Posts (what’s a tag?) Spell-check, Previews, Auto-Save, Video, Photos and Words Statistics tracking Spam Protection Privacy OPTIONS Import from other software (like Blogger) Exporting (you “own” it) Taken from http://wordpress.com/features/ How does WordPress stay afloat? Website claims:  “WordPress.com is run by Automattic which currently makes money from the aforementioned upgrades, blog services, Akismet anti-spam technology, and hosting partnerships.”  Automattic • Private company • San Francisco • Matthew Mullenweg Website (again):  “Automattic Inc. is a startup from a handful of people passionate about making the web a better place. So far we’re best known for our work on WordPress and other projects but we have a lot of other interesting things in the pipeline as well. We are strong believers in Open Source and the vast majority of our work is available under licenses like the GPL. We work from places all around the world.  Automattic first got started around August of 2005, and has since grown..” Again, where is $$$? http://automattic.com/services/support-network/ Revenue Source  From Annual Subscriptions  • $2,500 /contact/year for Basic • $5,000 /contact/year for Premium • Who? “Anyone who needs extra help or piece of mind running their WordPress installation, though we primarily expect corporate users and other large scale WordPress deployments to sign up for the Support Network.”  From Akismet Spam Service • $55/year for personal • Up to $750/month for someone with 1000 blogs Okay, what do I need to know?     Privacy issues Directing traffic to your blog You’re “on your own” unless hire WordPress Consultants (individual attention) bbPress • (a movement for free support: “Code is poetry”) Conclusion   WordPress is free but limited So for our purposes, to help you learn, I want you to create an account on WordPress and link it to our class blog  Ta-Da! Blog that!