Website Design Overview with WordPress

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An Overview of WordPressby Tom King & Lewis Southwick

Art Institute of HoustonDate: March 29, 2011


A CMS designed to simplify the publication of web content to websites and mobile devices – in particular , allowing content creators to submit content without requiring technical knowledge of HTML (or other programming language), not be location dependent, or have knowledge of uploading of files to web servers.

Benefits of a CMS:

What is a Content Management System or CMS?

- Decentralized Maintenance: Edit information anywhere, anytime - Designed with non-technical authors in mind- Consistency of designed is preserved- Navigation is automatically generated and adjusted- Dynamic content - Schedule your content delivery


• WordPress is an Open Source project, which means there are hundreds of people all over the world working on it. (More than most commercial platforms.) It also means you are free to use it for anything from your cat’s home page to a Fortune 500 web site without paying anyone a license fee

• Wordpress has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, and seen by hundreds of millions of people every day.

How WordPress started out: Blogging Platform

“Wordpress is free but also priceless”


• Over 25 million people have chosen WordPress to power the place on the web they call “home.”

• Thousands and thousands of plugins are developed to create some of the most dynamic and innovative web sites on the web

• Hundreds of thousands of customizable themes, many are free

• Hosting companies recognize Wordpress’ popularity and cater to its many uses

What WordPress is Today: Full Blown CMS Platform


Companies that have implemented WordPress:


• Speed: Load speed affects your search engine rank and reader retention

• Cost: Web hosting companies have dramatically dropped their price on hosting

• Easy Hosting Panel: simple, user friendly hosting panel for the non-technical

• Scalability: cloud servers can scale up based on traffic demands

• Guaranteed Uptime: cloud hosting never crashes since it is on a bundle of different servers, not just ONE

Hosting & Cloud Advantages of WordPress


• Set up takes only a few minutes• Thousands of templates or “themes” available• Updates for new version of WordPress are one step

and user received automation notification of available updates

• Easy to use WordPress Dashboard• Numerous written and video tutorials are available for

just about every step of the installation, set up and maintenance process

• Default Setup on Installation: Upon installation, the platform includes one blog post, one page, one comment, some default widgets that would commonly be used on a blog, and one theme

Setup & Maintenance Advantages of WordPress


• MS Word style editor to allow ease of creation, formatting and publication

• Allows readers/users to offer their feedback and suggestions providing extremely valuable user generated content

• RSS feed integration allows you to enhance your site popularity by offering readers to automatically receive new content

• Vast Plug-In Network to increase the effectiveness of content syndication across multiple channels

Content Publication Advantages of WordPress


• Better Control: CSS gives you control over the layout of your web pages. Format font, buttons, navigation, link design, table structure. Reinforces Uniformity

• Huge Time Saver: CSS apply the specified styles whenever that element occurs across your entire site

• Page Loads Faster: less code faster load• Superior Styles to HTML: CSS has a much

wider array of attributes than HTML

HTML/CSS Advantages of WordPress

**Browsers have varying levels of compliance with Style Sheets. It is Important to check your work across multiple browser to ensure compatibility**


• Meta tags are automatically generated which saves time and effort• WordPress also automatically optimizes titles for SEO• Permalinks makes pages easier to find in search engines and the links do not

become irrelevant• Automated sitemap creation & updating• Allows user to use keyword tags to tag each post• Easily optimized images via “Insert Image” tool allows you to add images,

image titles, and image alt tags• Built in RSS feeds allows fresh, new and relevant content to be added with

little to no effort

SEO Advantages of WordPress


WordPress SEO-friendly Plugin Suggestions:

• All in One SEO Pack: allows specific title, description and keywords per post• All in One Webmaster: integrates Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools, Live

Webmaster Tools, Quantcast, Alexa, and others• W3 Total Cache: speeds up site performance• XML Site Map Creator & Media Sitemap Creators: creates .xml site map for

pages and media for search engine submission• Google Adwords Plugin: integrates Adwords quickly and easily• RSS Footer: Allows keyword rich RSS title links for backlinks• Automatic SEO Links: Allows you to choose a word or phrase for automatic

linking which builds internal link building• SEO Tag Cloud Widget: coverts your tag cloud into an SEO-friendly HTML

markup that can be indexed


• Brand building: maintain your brand• Relationship Management: relate to your customers• Product Development: the BEST R&D for your products• Reputation Management: monitor positive & negative

publicity• Customer Interaction: Give your brand a voice• Customer Feedback: INSTANT feedback from your

customers• Customer Support: a FREE customer support outlet• Community & Loyalty Building: great platform to build

brand loyalty and a customer community

SMM Advantages of WordPress


WordPress SMM-friendly Plugin Suggestions:

• Facebook Like Button Plugin: allows users to like your page with 1 click• Sexy Bookmarks: Customizable social media icon list• Sociable: automated addition of new content to social media sites• DandyID Services: provides up to 330 social media site links in a widget• Bookmarkify: a social media bookmark plugin• PingPressFM: submits your post to your ping.fm account• Retaggr: create a virtual business card with links to your SMM accounts• WordTwit: automated push to Twitter account of new content• TweetMeMe: 1 click Tweet of content to Twitter account• Meet Your Commenters: provides user info for the commenters on your post

so you can follow them on their social media accounts.


• Hiring - Requires lesser egree of HTML/CSS expertise

• Training - Plenty of books, videos, online programs to train employees

• Payroll - Easier to find, train, replace employees, thus they are more replaceable and less expensive

• Publishing - The content publishing person can have basically no html experience

• Reduced Office Space Required –employees can work remotely and not require to be physically present

Employee / Payroll Advantages of WordPress


• Innovative state-or-the-art web site design featuring the WordPress CMS

• Custom WordPress blog integration• 100% CSS based tables• Source ordered and highly optimized for

search engine optimization• Social media marketing integration for

Wordpress• Custom content creation and syndication

calendar for WordPress content

WordPress Design Services – Forward Marketing


An Overview of WordPressby Tom King & Lewis Southwick

Ph: 713-449-2000Email: [email protected]

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Website Design Overview with WordPress