WordPress Visual QuickStart Guide

The folks at WordPress have an early holiday present for us: WordPress 3.3! Check out our image gallery to see some of what’s new:

The first hint that something new is afoot comes right after you run the update: instead of the usual “You’re running the latest version of WordPress” message, you’ll see a handy welcome screen that gives you an overview of all the new features in 3.3.

If you’ve been feeling ho-hum about the WordPress admin dashboard, get ready to celebrate. This update completely re-thinks the Dashboard UI, adding flyout menus, a persistent admin toolbar at the top of every screen, and help tabs everywhere you need them.

The post editing tools have been updated as well; one of the most significant is the media uploader, which now features a single icon instead of an icon for each content type. This makes perfect sense, and is a welcome change – though it may be jarring if you’re used to picking a content type before you upload! If you use Tumblr, you’ll be pleased to note that there’s now an easy way to import your Tumblog into WordPress. Hint: use a theme with Post Formats to make the transition as seamless as possible.

There have been some behind-the-scenes updates as well: permalink options have been updated, jQuery has been updated to 1.7.1, and there’s a new API for working with admin screens.

Have you updated yet? Get cracking! And let us know your thoughts on the new version in the comments.

By Jessica Neuman Beck December 12th, 2011 See more in: News & Updates · WordPress · WordPress 3.0

You guys rock! We’re delighted to be sending out a batch of freshly-printed Second-Edition WordPress Visual QuickStart Guides to all our contest winners.

Didn’t win this time? Be sure to Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to be the first to hear about future giveaways and contests!

By Jessica Neuman Beck October 28th, 2011 See more in: VQS · WordPress · WordPress 3.0

WordPress Visual QuickStart Guide Second Edition

You love WordPress. You love free stuff.

This contest is for you.

Win a copy of our NEW book, the WordPress Visual QuickStart Guide, Second Edition. It’s the newest and best edition yet, chock full of step-by-step instructions and clear, useful screenshots to guide you through the process of doing pretty much everything you could possibly want to do with WordPress.*

Here’s how you enter:

There are THREE WAYS you can enter to win a copy of the new book.

1. Use the Tweet Button at the bottom of this list to tell Twitter that you want to win our book
2. Become our fan on Facebook and leave a comment on our wall telling us you want to win
3. Post a link to this contest on your blog, website or Facebook page and encourage your readers to enter

Tweet

As an added bonus: if you do ALL THREE of the things listed above and post a comment on this post telling us about it, we will enter your name THREE TIMES.

UPDATE: The contest runs from NOW until October 27. We will choose 10 winners. GOOD LUCK!

*This statement is almost certainly mostly somewhat untrue. But we do walk you through a LOT.

By Jessica Neuman Beck October 20th, 2011 See more in: VQS · WordPress · WordPress 3.0

We are at WordCamp! Check out our posts on the couldbe studios blog to see what fabulous things we’re learning at this year’s unconference.

By Jessica Neuman Beck September 17th, 2011 See more in: WordPress

So you’ve got this lovely new site and you’ve decided exactly how many posts to show at any given time to optimize the viewing experience. But – what’s this? You get to the end of your displayed posts and see…

…nothing.

Hey, where's my navigation?

You need a set of navigation links, and stat.

Luckily, they’re easy to add.

Open your index.php file. Scroll down until you get to the end of the Loop and add the following:

<div id="nav-below" class="navigation">
<div class="nav-previous">
<?php next_posts_link(
__('<span class="meta-nav">&larr;</span>
Older posts')) ?>
</div>

<div class="nav-next">
<?php previous_posts_link(
__('Newer posts
<span class="meta-nav">&rarr;</span>')) ?>
</div>
</div>

Save and close your index.php file.

Next, open your style.css file and add something like this:

div#nav-above,div#nav-below{
width:100%;
height:20px;
}
div#nav-above a, div#nav-below a{
color:#000;
text-decoration:none;
font-size:14px;
font-weight:bold;
display:block;
margin:20px 0;
}
div#nav-above a:hover, div#nav-below a:hover{
color:#000;
text-decoration:underline;
}
div.nav-previous{
float: left;
}
div.nav-next{
float: right;
}

Save and close your style.css file.

Now refresh your blog page, and behold! Fancy older/newer links to ensure that your readers can browse your content with ease.

What lovely navigation you have!

By Jessica Neuman Beck September 6th, 2011 See more in: Tutorials

Getting the updated site ready for the 2nd Edition launch.

By Jessica Neuman Beck August 21st, 2011 See more in: WordPress

Help choose the best WordCamp speaker!

By Jessica Neuman Beck July 24th, 2011 See more in: WordPress

WordPress 3.2 (“Gershwin”) has officially been released! This update includes some pretty big changes, so even if you’re not in the habit of backing up your WordPress installation before upgrading, you really should do it this time. Really. We mean it.

Done backing up yet? Good! Let’s get started.

The new Fullscreen Mode in the post editor provides a distraction-free writing space

Here’s some stuff you need to know about the newest version of WordPress:

• Minimum requirements have changed. You’ll need PHP 5.2.4 or greater and MySQL 5.0.15 or greater.
• IE 6 is no longer supported and IE 7 is being phased out.
• There’s a new default theme (Twenty Eleven).
• The Dashboard UI has been refreshed with a brand new look – it’s cleaner, easier on the eyes and sporting some slick typography updates.
• The ‘Press This’ bookmarklet has a new UI as well.
• When creating a post, you can now enter fullscreen mode, a gorgeously distraction-free space that lets you concentrate on writing.

There are a bunch of updates to the core files as well, making WordPress much lighter and faster-loading.

For a full breakdown of the new features, check out the Codex.

By Jessica Neuman Beck July 5th, 2011 See more in: News & Updates · WordPress · WordPress 3.0

If you’re at all a fan of microblogging, you’ve probably seen some 140-character disasters come sailing through your stream. I’m not talking about faux-pas or inappropriate missives; my real peeve is using microblogging as a relay service for whatever content you actually do update.

Am I suggesting that you should never tweet about sales, blog posts or links to other sites? Not at all! Those are all perfectly legitimate uses of a microblog, and can be a powerful tool for bringing a new audience to your content.

The difference between an unexplained URL and a quick note (“Today I’m talking about gluten!”) followed by a link: huge. One of them is practically bound to be ignored (didn’t your mama teach you never to follow strange links?); the other lets people know at a glance where you’re sending them and why they should click.

But don’t think that you can just paste that same note and URL combo everywhere you have an online presence. Remember, some of your fans may follow you in multiple places. If all you’re doing is regurgitating the same tired message, all you’re really saying to your fans is that there’s no point in paying attention to more than one of your feeds. That can be a real problem if you ever do decide to run specials or connect with your followers in a meaningful way – once they’re gone, it’s unlikely they’ll be back.

By Jessica Neuman Beck June 26th, 2011 See more in: Blogging

Stats can be a great way to keep tabs on how much traffic your site it getting, but remember to take them with a grain of salt.

Different tracking programs register hits in different ways. For example, WordPress.com stats (like the ones I have on this very site) will very helpfully tell you that they don’t count your own visits to your site in your total daily views…but if you’re checking your site from a different browser (or a different device, like your iPad) then all those obsessive clicks to see if your comment count has updated will cause your view count to soar to the stratosphere.

Some stats programs can be configured to ignore all views from your IP address, which can take care of the multiple browsers/devices problem…but if you take a look at some of your site visitors you may notice things called bots or spiders. Those are search engines crawling your site, and they are extremely unlikely to comment to tell you how brilliant you are. Being largely composed of algorithms, bots and spiders just want to make sure your content is relevant.

By Jessica Neuman Beck June 26th, 2011 See more in: WordPress