What’s new in Library Web site development?
- Johnson County Library – buttons and drop down menus
- Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library – chat reference, content added by multiple staff members, RSS, events and tag clouds
- Yorbalinda Public Library – Book Feeds widget
- Ann Arbor District Library – Drupal open source software
- Westerville Public Library – Director’s blog, Flickr feeds, account and catalog links, videos, and RSS
What is WordPress?
- Blogging application
- traditionally, blogs are frequently updated, personal websites featuring diary-type commentary and links to articles on other Web sites.
- main content area has articles listed chronologically, newest on top
- articles are organized into categories
- older articles contained in an archive
- people can leave comments about the articles
- links to other related sites are listed (called a “blogroll”)
- “feeds” like RSS, Atom or RDF files are available
- traditionally, blogs are frequently updated, personal websites featuring diary-type commentary and links to articles on other Web sites.
- Open source
- freely distributed, collaboratively developed and modified software code
- collaboratively written support materials – www.wordpress.org
Exploration of WordPress
- What the world sees…
- Header
- Post
- Title
- Categories
- Comments
- Images
- Sidebar(s)
- Pages
- Archives
- Categories
- Links (Blogroll)
- Meta
- Behind the Scenes…
- Dashboard
- Settings
- Update/Edit header and “General Settings”
- Site Administration
- Plugins
- Users
- Settings
- Write
- Write Post
- Write Page
- Write Link
- Manage
- Edit/Delete posts
- Edit/Delete pages
- Edit/Delete links
- Add/Edit categories – index/group posts by topic
- Add/Edit tags
- Add/Edit link categories
- Edit/Delete media library (images)
- Design
- Themes
- Widgets
- Install a Theme
- Header/Theme customization
- Comments
- Moderate comments and Spam
- HELP
- Dashboard
Thinking About Content
- What is the purpose of your site?
- Promote news and events
- Provide information about Library operations (hours, contacts)
- Provide hard-to-find information
- Provide access to local information
- Local history
- How simple or complicated do you want the site to be?
- Who will add and update content?
- Who will check for dead links?
- What information do you NEED and WHERE do you want to put it?
Home page (sidebar widgets) :: Pages :: Posts organized by Category- Widgets – Hours :: Catalog :: Images via Flickr :: Search boxes :: Audiobooks, Music and More
- Pages – About :: Policies :: Feature Page :: Board Information :: Teens :: Kids :: Readers
Tips and Tricks
- ColorSchemer – For Themes that allow color customization
- Buttons – Use a photo editor to generate a hyperlinked ‘button’
- Simple How To guide for tasks like adding and editing images and making hyperlinked image buttons for a Text widget.