by Brenda Barron
Last updated: October 29, 2019
- Login to your Dreamhost account and navigate to WordPress –>One Click Installs.
- Install WordPress in a NEW FOLDER on your Dreamhost account, following these instructions.
- An email (based on your Dreamhost account email) will be sent to you from WordPress to set your password. Use an easy temporary password, as it will be replaced when you import your local site.
- On each of your two sites: login to WordPress Dashboard. In WordPress Dashboard go to Plugins–>Add New. Search for All In One WP Migration plugin
- Install the All In One WP Migration plugin plugin & Activate it on your source (local) site and on your Destination {online) WordPress site. A new All In One WP Migration plugin tab will appear in the black menu area of the Dashboard. Use this tab to do all import/exports.
- Now export your Source (local) website via the All-in One Migration plugin with the Export To button (Ignore the ADD button . This will generate a file with extension .wpress
- Then login to your WordPress Destination (online) site. Go to All-in One Migration plugin and import. You will be asked to replace/delete all current info (in order to replace it with all the content from your Source WordPress site.
- Make sure your email in your Source (local) WordPress site is your @maine.edu email–as your user/email /password will ALSO be imported onto the new site.
- Once import is complete, you will only be able to login to the update site with the original user/email/password from your Destination (local) site. As that info replace the temp password you gave tot he Destination site earlier.
- Login to the updated Destination (online ) WordPress site, using the user or email//password from the Source (local ) site, then in Dashboard go to User–> Add New–> add me (see Slack #Wordpress for my credentials to add) and also add your teammates–all as Administrator.
WordPress Install
Portfolio
- Get Dreamhost hosting, using your @maine.edu email; if you used another email, go to your profile/account in upper right (see my tiny photo in first image upper right near Joline) and edit your email so it’s the @maine.edu one (you can change it in a few months if needed; but ANY WordPress install you create will use this Dreamhost email).
- (If you mistakenly installed any WordPress sites, you may need to ask me to delete them before installing any other ones–I can do this in class)
- Install WordPress with “WordPress–> One Click Install”. Add a folder when Installing, and check OFF the 2 tick boxes. ANY Install of WordPress should be in a folder–that’s what the blank box is for–ie the folder name, which will become the last part of your URL after your domain name. Keep the Automatically Create Database.
- Once WordPress is installed, you should find the email (it will be @maine.edu IF your Dreamhost account is set to that) and set it to the SAME password as on your local site–this will avoid any password confusion, as they should be NO change. Wordpress ALWAYS links your website to your email address which cannot change, and Dreamhost uses its email on file to create your WordPress email for each One-Click Install.
- Then add the All-in-one Migration plug-in on both your local site & your new Dreanhosted WordPress site.
- You will need to login to your Dreamhosted WordPress site to do so. Your URL wil now likely be http://mygreatdoman.com/portfolio; Use http://mygreatdoman.com/portfolio/wp-admin to login to your new Dreamhosted WordPress site.
- On your local site, use the plugin to export your site as a “file” on your local computer.
- In your Dreamhost WordPress site, use the All-in-one Migration plug-in (see tab in Dashboard once you activate the plugin) and IMPORT the file that you created from your local website.
- Both sites will now have the SAME email/password, since you just imported that (complete with login info).
Client
Client sites work the same way in steps 1 & 2, but you may not be importing any clones sites, AND you must use a new folder when you do the 0ne-click-install; ie not “portfolio” but maybe “wbbfestival” or whatever identifies your site–no caps, no spaces. You can even use the same email/password for the client site; as your teammates will also create their own when you add them as “Users” with Admin role to the client site
]]>For the client site we added images with links to the homepage, added ‘visit us’, ‘contact us’, and ‘follow us’ buttons with links on the homepage. Used CSS to edit site background pages.
For my personal site I edited menus and cleaned up the phrasing.
]]>If you keep track of and document your process, you can tell the story of this site in your own Portfolio!!! Before/after photo sliders are easy in WordPress…so get before/after images!!
Create
- Home Page
- Posts Page
Using “Quick Edit” from the All Posts are, be sure the “slugs” for each page are correct. ie they are “home” and “posts”, NOT “home-3” or “post-yourname” or whatever else they might have been called if you made a previous Page with an unusual title. Page Names/slugs CAN be changed, as long as there is not already a post/page with that same name. (in which case change THAT name, then return to your preferred page and update that name/slug).
You will use these to make a custom Home page–rather than having a blog of all your posts be the default home page.
Remove
If you did a deluxe install or an auto install of WordPress, you will get some extra potentially conflicting, and certainly confusing plug-ins and functions, as Dreamhost gives you a free page builder called BOLD GRID. Like Elementor, it is a page builder, but not quite as useful for our purposes. So IF you installed these by accident, you should remove them. Do this by 1) first deactivate the plugin. 2) Once you are sure they are the right ones, you can delete them. Deactivation should prevent conflicts, but you’ll want a CLEAN site without extras, so in the long term they should be removed if not used.
Go to the Plug-ins area and remove any BOLDGRID plugins. That will be all plugins [except Total Upkeep–a backup plugin] that list the creator as boldgrid, such as:
- Bold Grid …
- Post and Page Builder.. by boldgrid
- Optinmonster
- Hello Dolly
- I will add to this list if I can recall all of them…
Add
Go to the Plug-ins area and Add New. You can type the following names (or part of them) in the search area to pull up the plugin you want. Install, then Activate each plugin.
- Elementor
- Essential Add-Ons for Elementor
- Premium Add Ons for Elementor
- Starter Templates
- Classic Editor
And if you dont already have these:
- Total Upkeep
- WP-Forms Lite
Install Themes
Install the Following two themes–both are highly configurable and work with starter templates, with minor difference listed below; Install both, but Activate ONLY one:
- Astra–has better templates
- Generate Press–is a bit more configurable
Adjust
Go to the Settings are in the Dashboard and adjust all the following settings [click on each image for larger view]:
- General–>Site Title, Tagline
- Writing–> Allow Users to switch editors=yes
- Reading–>Homepage set to Static Page–> Home; Post page set to Posts
- Permalinks–> set to Post Name This makes sure the title of your post matches the URL for the post–very helpful for readers to keep track of their navigation on your site.
Layout
For super fast site build for a NEW site, and possibly some new sites…Use Starter Templates to import a whole site. This will import 3-6 pages for you, and you can then customize the menu, and use whichever pages you want (you can re-name, duplicate and copy pages). The pages that are unused will NOT show up if you do not have a link or menu item that links to them. So they stay invisible. They can be deleted when site is complete if no longer needed.
In Dashboard, go to Appearance–>Starter Templates. If prompted, select Elementor [if not, it may already be set]. Then, select ALL–>Free in the dropdown to get only free templates. Then scroll down page to find a suitable template. Click on it to see ALL the pages in the template. You can click on each page to view it. If you want 1 page, save & install that one; If you want ALL the pages, you can select “Import/Save” Entire Site.
Then 1) view the site, 2) go see the pages in the dashboard in Pages–>All pages, so you can see each page, 3)Create a new menu so you can configure it, and set in as your primary menu, 4) now go customize any and all pages that would work for your client.
This is a quick way to show client a “look” for a site. If each of you has a client WordPress site; you could create 3 options, and send your client all three URLs to view alt designs…
Now comes all of the heavy lifting…
Customize
Start with the following Site-wide setting that you access from Elementor on your Home Page:
- Home Page; in Elementor, use the upper left hamburger menu to find Site Settings–> Global Fonts, and Global Colors, and SET your color palettes for your theme–You will use these everywhere with Elementor!! Use the W3schools color picker to find the right 6 digit hex color, like #000000. And check out these Color Palettes
- Home Page in Elementor, Page settings gear in lower left corner: Decide which page layout you want: Default, Elementor, Elementor Canvas, Theme.
- Theme Customize settings, under Appearance–>Customize. You do not need to do all of these at this time, just the ones that you know.
Content
If your client has a previous WordPress site, you can ask them to export all their data from their dashboard. You can do a screen share with them and walk them through it, like we did for your WordPress.com sites…
If not, you will need to get the content from your client–text, images, video etc.
Reiterate Layout/Content/Tweaking until you get a coherent, functional, beautiful, content rich site!!
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Structure Work
Below are fundamental questions to ask your client. You may want to send them this URL before meeting, and ask them to consider which questions will be relevant to them, or how you would learn this information. In your first meeting, set goals to accomplish for your next meeting. Do this at every meeting.
Decide on a way to communicate
- Zoom Weekly check-ins with client
- Set up four-way Text group for quick messages
- Use Trello or Spreadsheet to chart progress
- Use Slack channel for team collaboration
- Send weekly, brief, email reports based on weekly check-ins.
Decide on weekly check-ins, even if brief, in which you
- Raise any questions
- Show progress
- Ask for feedback
- Set next goals
Basic Info
Meeting Questions
Use the Basic Info questions above, then add any of the following questions that relate more specifically to your project/client.
- Website type, what do they want it to achieve? What’s its purpose?
- Who is your target customer and what do they want? Do you have data to support that?
- Site map and page map, how many pages and sub categories?
- Do they have a style or theme they like? Sites they like or don’t like and why.
- How much content? Do they have all the content? Very important to ask this.
- Does the client have branding or logos, if not do they want you to work on that?
- Do they want links to social media?
- Do they want e-commerce? If so do they want you to source a third party to manage that?
- If selling products, how many different types?
- Do they want multilingual?
- Do they have or need professional photos?
- Do they need help with graphic design?
- Do they want to prioritize mobile experience?
- Any special functionality?
Some elements to consider in About Me pages:
The Hook
How can you hook your reader? Try something unusual or unexpected. You can use an image or font size or style to add emphasis.
The Content
Consider including the essentials: 1. Who you are
2. What you do
3. Why you do it
No need to specify that this is your About page. It’s redundant and unnecessry.
The Basics
Start with your name, situation (student/job) and location, and a favorite activity or hobby—what makes you distinctive.
Be bold and also humble about your achievements—basically be honest and human.
The Background
What’s your story? Where do you come from? Why are you doing what you are doing?
Add picture of yourself – A photo of your face can create connect and make you appear trustworthy.
If you have related video, use it. You can easily embed a youtube video in WordPress, just paste the link in the body of the post.
The Quirks
Consider a few things that make you offbeat, odd, different from the rest and thus human. Revealing both strengths and vulnerabilities gives you cred.
The Action
A call-to-action asks viewers to do something: look at your epic portfolio, download your health tips, see your recent character sketches, etc. They invite a deeper look, or an action. You can use a photo/button for this.
The Contact
Give your viewers away to contact you – this can be via a contact form or social media. Personal contact info works if your site is small, but if it’s a social site or it roads, you may want a separate site email and/or social media accounts.
Some examples
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WordPress is a global phenomenon that has come a long way since the release of the first version in 2003. The community has grown considerably, and that growth doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
WordPress is now the most dominant CMS on the market — standing head and shoulders above the competition with a good chunk of the marketshare.
The sheer size and scope of the impact WordPress has had on the internet is hard to imagine. That’s why we have collected some shocking WordPress stats to help put it all into perspective.
WordPress Took Over 112 Years to Build
Obviously that isn’t true because WordPress started in 2003, and you know, computers haven’t existed that long. It’s hard to tell just how many human hours it took to create the WordPress core, but that didn’t stop the people at Open Hub from trying.
According to Open Hub’s Project Cost Calculator, WordPress took an estimated effort of over 112 person-years. This is based off of 423,759 lines of code, with an estimated cost of over $6 million to fund a project of this size.
WordPress is the Top Content Management System
Companies such as W3Tech and Builtwith provide useful reports on internet usage using big data. These numbers may not be pinpoint accurate, but they do provide a valuable glimpse into today’s web trends.
According to W3techs, WordPress has 58.55% of the CMS marketshare — more than all other systems (eg, Drupal, Joomla) combined.
Another chart provided by BuiltWith, attributes 51% of the market share to WordPress. While the numbers may vary depending on the data collected, one thing is certain — WordPress is the top CMS on the planet.
34% of the Internet is Powered by WordPress
Considering that the number of total active websites is estimated at over 172 million according to a survey published by netcraft, that means that around 75,000,000 websites are using WordPress right now — with around half of those sites (37,500,000) being hosted on the WordPress.com shared hosting installation. This means that around 20% of all self-hosted websites use WordPress, which is still huge.
WordPress 4.7 Has Been Downloaded Over 19,700,000 Times
This figure is only for the latest version of WordPress, “Vaughn.” You can checkout the download counter at WordPress.org to see how many times the latest version has been downloaded.
Keep in mind that these are the download numbers, not the number of active WordPress websites. If we total that number with the download count for the 30 previous versions of WordPress, the number comes out to over 196 million downloads.
WordPress is *Still* Growing
The WordPress platform has evolved into a well-oiled machine thanks to the robust community.
Local communities organize WordCamps for users of all skill levels. So far there are 635 WordCamps, in 68 cities across the globe — mostly in the USA, Canada, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Austria, Italy, Mexico, and South Africa.
It’s worth mentioning that 65 of the WordCamps took place outside of the US in the year 2016 alone. Check the official WordCamp Schedule to find a meetup near you. Below are some fresh stats from the 2016 State of the Word slideshow :
- 115 Wordcamps took place in 41 hosting countries.
- 3,193 Meetup events took place in 58 hosting countries.
- WordPress.tv videos published increased by 26.7%.
- The WordPress Foundation made $4.3 million in revenue, up from $2.8 million the previous year.
- In the past 5 years marketshare growth has gone up from 13.1% to 27.2%.
WordPress is Available in Over 50 Languages
Internationalization and localization, abbreviated as i18n and l10n, is the process of translating software into another language.
The fact that WordPress is accessible in so many languages is one of the biggest things that set it apart from other platforms.
The WordPress Polyglots team is responsible for localizing WordPress — this includes the WordPress core, plugins, and themes.
WordPress has translations for over 160 languages, but only 65 are completely finished.
The latest version of WordPress (4.7) is written in 52 languages, which includes the 12 most popular languages of the world: Chinese, English, Portugese, Spanish, Arabic, French, Spanish, Urdu, Russian, Bengali, German, and Japanese.
The Polyglots team is growing steadily, and the future looks bright for the translation of WordPress into all the world’s leading languages.
WordPress Content is Published in Over 120 Different Languages
WordPress makes it easy to translate a website into a different language. Currently, the English language version of WordPress is at the top of the list with 71% of WordPress blogs. Next is Spanish (4.7%), Indonesian (2.4%), and Portugese (2.3%).
WordPress Sites Make Up 14.7% of the Top 100 Websites in the World
Some of the most successful companies in the world prefer WordPress as their CMS, including: TED, NBC, CNN, TechCrunch, People magazine, the NFL, Best Buy, CBS Radio, and UPS. These are just a few of the Fortune 500 companiespowered by WordPress.
WordPress Never Sleeps
Like a river, WordPress is in a constant state of motion. This live map of activity across WordPress.com lets you see comments, posts, and likes in real time.
To get a better idea of how much information is being read, published, and managed — check out these WordPress stats. Here you can find stats on files uploaded, posts, pages read, and much more.
WordPress Gets 175 Million Page Views Per Month
Can WordPress handle it? The answer is yes, WordPress handles an enormous amount of traffic on a daily basis.
The record for the most unique page views in a day on a WordPress website in 2016 is 187 million! This was of course on election day. WordPress.com also boasts an Alexa global website ranking of 54.
WordPress users publish 41.7 million new posts each month
Communication is the currency of the internet, and WordPress users are a spendy bunch. Users leave 60.5 million comments per month.
In 2016, WordPress Published 117,939,148,357 Words
Once again…that number is: One hundred seventeen billion, nine hundred thirty-night million, one hundred forty-eight thousand, three hundred fifty-seven. It’s quite a mouthful, and certainly more words than one person can utter in a lifetime.
WordPress.com Blogs Have Over 400 Million Monthly Viewers
There is a lot of reading and writing going on via WordPress. Over 400 million viewers looked at 20+ billion pages per month this past year.
WordPress Has Had 4,969 Commits by 70 Contributors
As one of the largest open-source projects in the world, WordPress has a large number of contributors. The WordPress developer team has had over 70 developers contribute to the WordPress core, which contains over 430,000 lines of code.
WordPress is the Fastest Growing Web Publication Software
Data collected from 2004-present comparing keyword searches for popular CMSs by Google Trends clearly indicates that WordPress related keywords rank higher among search engine queries than competitors such as Drupal, Blogger, and Sharepoint. If you want to draw traffic, write about WordPress.
WordPress is a Lucrative Career Opportunity
WordPress is able to solve many of the problems businesses face online. It’s a safe bet that serious skills in WordPress can translate into a lucrative career opportunity.
There is a high demand for skilled freelancers, contractors, and direct hires. A WordPress developer can make anywhere from $30 to $200 per hour according Mark Jaquith, a WordPress core contributor.
There are a number of jobs for a WordPress professional including:
- Writer/Editor
- Web Developer
- Web Designer
- Graphic Designer
- Marketing and Social Media
- Technical Support Specialist
- Content Management
To get an idea of what people charge for WordPress services, you can visit the Envato Market’s WordPress section, or check out the WordPress freelancers at Upwork.
There Are 3,000+ Free GPL-licensed Themes for WordPress
You can find these free themes in the WordPress theme directory. There are also many themes available for purchase from 3rd party vendors. One of the largest commercial theme repositories is Themeforest, which has 8,600+ themes for sale.
WordPress Can Be Installed in 5 Minutes or Less
WordPress makes things easy because it automates many tedious tasks involved in web publishing. The Famous 5 Minute Install allows just about anyone to launch a WordPress site with just a few clicks — to the dismay of underemployed developers everywhere.
There Are 48,500+ Free Plugins for WordPress
Plugins extend the functionality of the WordPress core. You can find validated plugins in the official WordPress Plugin Directory.
They have been downloaded over 1.5 billion times. That’s more than enough downloads for every single human being in China. These are just the plugins from WordPress.org. There are thousands of other 3rd party plugins available for free or purchase, too.
Over 39% of All Online Stores Run on WooCommerce
WooCommerce, the most popular ecommerce software for WordPress, currently runs over 1.5 million active online stores. According to Builtwith, WooCommerce has a 10% share of the ecommerce technology market.
Jetpack Was Installed on Over 2,000,000 New Websites Last Year
Jetpack is an essential WordPress plugin loaded with features. This free plugin can help you accomplish a variety of tasks involving things like traffic insight, social media integration, backups, and security. This past year alone Jetpack helped WordPress users:
- Automatically post 374 million posts to social networking sites
- Optimize, cache, and deliver 29 million images per day from WordPress.com’s CDN
- Prevent 23 billion brute force attacks.
Akismet Blocked 80 Billion Spam Comments
Akismet protects your comment section from spam, bots, and all sorts of bad news on the internet. With over 1 million active installs, Akismet successfully prevented 23 billion brute force attacks, too.
WordPress.com Only Has 532 employees
WordPress only has 532 employees (including 12 people named Michael) spread out between 51 different countries. This fact may not seem so strange until you consider their competitors.
WordPress must be doing something right if they can handle 175 million unique visitors with only a fraction of the employees that other big internet companies have.
It may certainly have something to do with the fact that WordPress is such a large open-source project, and that their workforce is 100% remote.
WordPress Denied 40% of DMCA Takedowns
One of the most attractive aspects of using WordPress is the freedom it affords the user.
WordPress promotes freedom of speech as well as the freedom to use, modify, and distribute the software in any manner you please. WordPress.com works hard to carefully enforce legitimate copyright claims, while pushing back against claims that stifle creativity or freedom of speech.
From Jan 1, 2014 to June 30, 2016 there have been 21,052 DMCA takedown notices. Some or all of the content has been removed on 60% of those websites. WordPress has compiled a short list of improper takedown demands in their Transparency report.
WordPress Denied 65% of Information Requests
From July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2016, WordPress received 361 information requests from governments and law enforcement agencies. Of the 499 sites specified, WordPress released information on 35% of those. WordPress seems to be much more transparent about issues like this compared to other CMSs.
A Final Word on WordPress Stats
These shocking stats are a testament to the impact that this publishing platform has had on web standards, usability, and the internet at large. WordPress has spread like wildfire in the past decade, and the community is thriving. Now, do you know any other amazing stats we failed to mention?
Further Reading and Resources
We have more guides, tutorials, and infographics related to WordPress:
- WordPress Hosting Buyer’s Guide: How to find the perfect home for your WordPress site.
- How to Backup Your WordPress Blog: learn how to keep your website safe for those times when things go wrong.
- How Big is the WordPress Economy?: the WordPress economy is a lot larger and more varied than you probably realize.