Wordpress takes any content made and viewed by the visitor and puts it in a form of a database. Images are stored in on the server and the metadata to the database.
Chapter 2
The three main types of content for Wordpress that will be managed is posts, pages, and media types (files, images, etc.)
The Gutenberg block editor can have a certain set of blocks for editing a post or a pages. It allows you to be able to fully customize a page or a post.
Chapter 3
Any piece of content within a page or post can have its own inline editor and can manipulated to whereever if wants to be taken.
There are custom buttons that can link to another page within the site or outside to the web.
Wordpress automatically detects what type of content a block is and automatically gives you the set of options that apply to the type of content it is.
Chapter 4
When you're ready to publish a post, you can change its status and visibility. You can put it as a public, private, or password-protected. You'll also have the ability to schedule a posts when you're away from the computer.
Any posts that you make require an author, and have a category and/or tags. You may make a custom category if you need to.
Using category and tags will allow any content posted on a site to be organized and be found by search sites. It is good practice to use tags sparingly.
With the More block, this will allow a break so that the page isn't spending so much time loading up all the content in one page.
Chapter 5
Using the text block allows you to manuipulate the text by making it into a header, quotes, pull quote, bulleted/numbered lists, etc.
You alter images in a variety of ways such as giving it a fixed background, changing the overlay color, or create a gallery of images.
Another feature is embedding content from another service such as Instagram, Spotify, or Twitter post.
Group blocks allows you to take muliple blocks and group them up as one whole block and realign them all at once.
Chapter 6
A reusable block is essentially a template block that you can copy and be able to use in other posts.
You can use any kind of block (embed, images, text, etc.) and make into a reusable blocks.
Reusable block can be turned into a regular block if you want it to change for just one particular posts.
WordPress 5 Essential Training: Site Administration
Chapter 1
The admin dashboard can be customized to however you see fit. You can change various things like language, timezone, subscriber option, and so on.
In the discussion settings you do do various things to moderate comments and deter spam. One of them is having users be registered and logged in to comment and automatically close comments after a period of days.
Due to European laws, it's recommended to check the "Show comments cookies opt-in checkbox."
You can set up how many links a person allowed to link and filter out any swear words/profanity.
Chapter 2
Going to the customizer on the front end allows you to preview any edits before it goes live. You can even add a small site icon to display by the tab on your web browser.
Working on site visuals you may alter the background colors or even add a background image and adjust the size.
A theme controls the front end and appearance of your site, but doesn't affect your content.
There are many themes out there other than the default ones that come included with Wordpress.
Chapter 3
Plugins are small apps that will increase your functionality and you can turn them on and off when you need to. Only install the plugins you need.
Adding more and more plugins can increase the complexity of your site.
Chapter 4
You can set up Users on your site and be able to change how they interact with your site.
Have as few Administrators as possible. They have full control of the entire site.
A subscriber can only manage their profile and leave comments on posts.
A contributor writes and manages their own content but cannot publish them.
Authors can publish and manage their posts.
Editors can publish, moderate posts, edit them, and delete posts if necessary.
Any time that you have a new WordPress site, spam comments are inevitable. There are plugins that can help manage those and get rid of them.
Chapter 5
Use a trusted host that can specialze in Wordpress.
Adding a security plugin and optionally add a Two Factor Authentication will bolster it from brute force attacks.
Build some form of backup site and its data regularly.
Heavily limit the access of your site so no one can damage your site.
It is very crucial to up date your site regularly as it also contains security updates.
Wordpress: Workflows
Chapter 1
When choosing your domain name its important to make sure its easy to type, easy to remember, and to avoid hyphens and numbers.
Themes controls the designs and appearance of the WordPress site.
Plugins add functionality to a WordPress site.
On a WordPress site you're not limited to just text, you can add pictures, videos, audio, and documents to it.
Its better practice to upload video and audio content to another place and have it embedded on the WordPress site.
Chapter 2
Child themes allow you do make small changes in your site to give its own look and functionality within the main theme.
Its always a good idea to test out the site even pushing it to extremes.
Using an FTP app such as FileZilla with your child theme will make it easier to transition to using that child theme.
Chapter 3
When working with a client, you need to make sure you get the content from them and help get them familiar on how to use a CMS.
As a developer you'll be responsible for developing and implementing the design, testing to make sure the all the code runs effectively, and deploying to make sure all the links function.
Using a staging server before going live reduces the need for dummy content and can help understand how any assets effects the user experience.
Using git version control will help maintain the stability of the main site and allow you experiement with other features through a diffrent branch.
Chapter 4
Task runners are components on a site that run in the background. They can be installers or automating tasks.
Automated Testing is a practice that tests your code without pushing it to the server.
Having your site optimized for SEO is the best way to get your website seen by as many people as possible.
Having it optimized allows Google and other search engines to understand what kind of content your site is and makes its helpful for the visitors of your site.
Chapter 2
Using an SEO Crawler will have a bot click on all the links on your site to make sure that it is optimized.
On Chrome you can use the inspector to get any information on the elements being called, seeing any errors on the console tab, and you can emulate various devices.
Using Google Lighthouse will run an audit, scan our site, and show you how you can improve page speed.
Chapter 3
Avoid using too many WP SEO Plugins which may cause more bloating of your site.
Using a do-it-all SEO plugins will automatically perform basic SEO tasks and influence the SEO.
Chapter 4
Using a Crawler program will help evaluate what webpages are working, if there are any errors, and overall context on how to optimize the sites and pages.
You can use the crawl to fix any issues with titles and how its being presented on Google.
Using meta descriptions for each page is what Google uses to index search results.
Properly setting up your headings will help keep things organized and prioritize which content will be more prominient.
Chapter 5
Its best practice to use the Post name setting on posts as it keeps the url simple and clean.
Its also a good idea to use hyphens in between the words and keep them as short as possible.
Redirecting from an old link to a new one will help take that traffic and redirect it to correct page.
Chapter 6
Converting your site from HTTP to HTTPS will give it more security and is a big ranking factor for search sites.
First your site needs an SSL Certificate and you'll also need to handle all redirects from posts to the new link as WordPress does not do that automatically.
Chapter 7
At robots.txt file gives crawlers directives on what places they should and shouldn't be looking at so it doesn't waste time searching through the site.
You can create the robots.txt through a plugin or entering it manually.
Sitemaps lays out almost all the information and links to a website depending on the scale of the site. Sometimes there will be a sitemap index for the sitemaps to keep it organized. this is also being used by crawlers to navigate the site quickly.
Chapter 8
One critical way to get increase your traffic and SEO ranking is making sure that you have a good hosting site for your website. If the server is shared by other sites with poor performances, then it will bog down your performance as well.
Content Delivery Network takes the contents of you site and places it in a server that is closer to the visitors location so it loads faster.
It is recommended to use Cloudflare as there is a free version of it with very bare bones features.
Chapter 9
While Google says that domain name doesn't impact SEO rankings it is still a widely debated topic.
It is up to you whether or not you use the "www." on your site as it doesn't impact SEO performance.
In order to avoid negatively impacting SEO, you'll need to conform both "www." and non-"www." sites so they are not looked at as two separate sites. Which ever one that you use you will need to do a 301 redirect.
Chapter 10
Canonicalization tells a search engine which version of the URL you want to be indexed. This avoids the search engine from reading the many approaches to your site as duplicate content which will hurt your SEO ranking.
Chapter 11
When you use structured data, it lets a search engine understand the information and give it context to what a piece of content is. The search result of your content might show up on a rich result.
Using Schema.org and WordPress plugin will make creating structured data much easier.
Chapter 12
Image optimization is important for optimizing loading times for any website. If the images are too big and takes too long to render the end user might leave.
WP Smush is one of the most popular image compressors to use.
Make sure that all you images contain alt tags in them for accessibility for those who need it.
Chapter 13
It is important to make sure that you website it mobile friendly as for more people, its the only way they access websites. Make sure that run tests to determine whether or not the site is good for mobile.
Use animations sparingly. It might slow down the site performance.
Google Chrome has a built in performace index that can give you a better picture on how to improve a sites performance.
When your using Cache, you are pre-loading asset that are in your browser rather than dymanically loading all the time which will significantly improve performance of the site.
