The following article is an excerpt from a presentation I gave on WordPress as LMS that I felt deserved its own Post. Enjoy!~
In WordPress, you only need to understand (a minimum of) 5 KEY CONCEPTS to be able to effectively use the software. They are:
Pages
Posts
Categories
Tags
Media
1. Pages
Pages are hierarchical, “stand alone” articles on your site. Though they have publication dates (and can be scheduled for automatic future publication), they do not “flow” as a blog would. Pages are not inherently “related” to each other and they ARE NOT categorized by Categories nor Tags (more later).
If you want a Page to have some kind of relation to another Page, you must assign it a “Parent” in the Page Attributes widget in the Page editor (red box).
Pages will therefore act like individual menu items (they will be automatically added to your main menu if you don’t create one manually) – and “Parent” Pages will act as the top-level dropdown menu containing any “Child” Pages beneath them.
Pages may also utilize “templates”. These will give your Pages a different output on the front of the website and may look like any of the following:
Home page
Landing page
Contact page
Clients page
About page
Full-Width page
And so on
2. Posts
Posts are chronological (non-hierarchical) articles that “flow” along the Blog page, Home page, or Archive pages as they are written and published.
Posts are grouped together by Categories (that act like “buckets” or Folders), and Tags (keywords that are used to Search the site).
Posts may also utilize “Formats” that style certain Post types differently. For example, you may have different styles for:
Regular (Standard) Posts
Aside Posts (without a title visible on the Blog archive Page)
Image Posts
Video Posts
Quotation Posts
Link Posts
Gallery Posts
Status Update Posts
Audio Posts
Chat Posts
3. Categories
On the front-end of a site, Categories may be visible as Folder names for Month or Topic, or in the Breadcrumbs (the “You Are Here” collection of links at the top of a Post), or as individual Menu items.
(On the front-end, you won’t really be able to SEE the difference between Categories and Pages as they appear in the menu unless you click on the link. If it’s a Category, there will be a long list of Posts; if it’s a Page, there will be only ONE Page.)
With Categories, I usually assign each of my Classes at school (or topics) to a separate Category. That way, when the students click on the Category name, they are taken directly to an ongoing blog list of ONLY Posts for their class.
4. Tags
On the front-end of a site, Tags may be visible in a “Tag Cloud” (a collection of frequently used keywords throughout the site), or in the footer meta (a collection of data at the bottom) of a Post. You can also Search for Tags as these are WordPress’s “keywords.”
With Tags, I usually add the keywords for a lesson subject – such as a grammar point we’re studying or the key concepts to understand.
5. Media
WordPress Media is unique in TWO primary ways:
You can Drag-&-Drop media from your Desktop directly into the Post editor window to upload files.
You can Copy-Paste URLs from popular websites like YouTube and Twitter to get immediate, automatic embeds of those videos and tweets (among other things). No more copying over embed codes!
The WordPress editor also provides you with a view of what your Post will ACTUALLY look like on the front-end even as you type it and before publishing it.
This list of FIVE basic components of WordPress does not even begin to scratch the surface of what is possible, but it should give you a clearer understanding of how WordPress works and what kinds of things you can publish with it.
In upcoming Posts, I’ll delve deeper into both the “PRETTY” and the “POWER” of WordPress with topics on:
Theme Choice
Theme Customizer (pretty)
Top WordPress plugins (power)
Any questions about any of these? Let me know in the Comments below.
We are living in the middle of an age of educational and technological revolution. Will you get swept away, left behind, or ride the riptide of edtech into the future? Join me as I look at various successful models of online schools and classrooms, the major components that make up a successful online Learning Management System, and how to create one for yourself using WordPress.
This is a talk I presented at the Jeonju-Jeonbuk KOTESOL Chapter meeting for March 2015.
*Audience Note
I may have addressed this talk (and presented it) to a slightly wrong audience at the time. The meeting was small and contained people who are primarily ESL teachers – who may be familiar with certain web technologies.
However, I designed this talk for an audience who already understand the basic concepts of an LMS (Learning Management System) and want to implement it themselves in their classrooms.
Therefore, this talk is primarily an argument for WHY WordPress is the BEST solution for an LMS – as opposed to other possible solutions (including Moodle) – and introduces some basic concepts about how to put WordPress to work for you as an LMS.
WordPress as LMS
define:LMS/ Learning Management System: A digital learning environment to manage all aspects of the learning process.
In this talk, I will present THREE basic ideas about WordPress as LMS:
Recall again that an LMS is “a digital learning environment to manage all aspects of the learning process.” The following is a list of 6 basic aspects in the learning process:
Traditional classrooms usually involve a great deal of printed paperwork and in-class interaction with the teacher.
On the other hand, LMS-assisted classrooms may help reduce (or entirely eliminate) papers and increase student-to-student interaction both in and out of class.
Another reason LMS-assisted classrooms are beneficial for teachers:
No more lost USBs.
I personally haven’t carried a USB in 3-4 years because I store all my lessons, PPTs, documents, and resources on my classroom website (or in Google Docs which can be used in collaboration with my website). Besides that, simply by relying on a USB stick, you are risking spreading viruses between unprotected PCs or even absentmindedly leaving it behind after class.
Are you smarter than a College Freshman?
And another reason to start looking into setting up an LMS is because high-schoolers these days are learning this kind of technology themselves as graduation requirements.
In a document (created in 2006) I downloaded from the San Diego Unified School District that outlines High School Technology Compentencies, the following are the THREE level of Web Authoring competencies they seek for their students:
Basic: Understand web authoring terminology, how to use templates, and district policies on copyright, ethics, privacy, and security
Intermediate: Identify, prepare, create, and upload materials to a web publishing platform
Advanced: Understand and be able to use CSS code, Flash video, downloads, forms, and databases
EdTech is transforming K-12 learning with an intensity and at a pace that is disruptive, creative, and unpredictable.
Students are no longer content to be passive recipients of information. Few kids can sit behind a desk when they have smart phones or iPads in their possession.
The higher education business model is threatened by the need for cheaper delivery of services, content, and learning.
Pricing, Access, Connectivity, Competition – It’s all about Economics.
Actually, what we’re talking about here is the FUTURE of education. Every other industry in the world has seen a radical technological reformation and evolution. Education is now also beginning a radical change in the way school and learning happens, but where will our place be in this period of transition and change?
I think the main reason that more people don’t get more involved with EdTech is FEAR. They are afraid of the unknown, afraid of learning (difficult) new things, or afraid of being left behind.
But, I want to alleviate your fears a bit and argue that WordPress is a (comparatively) easy solution for beginning to get more of your own classes online.
Step 1B: Why WordPress?
define:WordPress/
The #1 web publishing CMS (Content Management System) in the world – powering 23% of all the world’s websites.
FREE. unlimited. awesomeness.
But what about some of the other LMS’s you may already be familiar with?
I think there are at least 6 primary considerations to keep in mind when choosing a suitable LMS. Each of the above is excellent in some of these aspects, but only WordPress rocks all of them:
available for WordPress. How much more power do you need?
3: Flexibility
Thanks to WordPress Multisite (a nifty optional feature in the WordPress core), the software is infinitely scalable. A couple of good examples of this are:
WordPress.com that serves up over 500 million sites using only ONE code base
Best Buy which uses ONE base installation to power their 1000s of store sites
WordPress is not “easy” as in “post-on-Facebook-easy” but compared to the many other options out there, it is surprisingly easy. I’ve even transferred clients to WordPress fromJoomla and Moodle after spending significant time with them in the backend trying to fix things how they wanted.
The WordPress Post editor closely resembles a Microsoft Word document editor and is just as easy to publish with.
If you can Word, then you can WordPress.
In fact, in a 2014 survey of WordPress users around the world, the company found out that 91% of WordPress sites took less than 4-5 weeks to make. This is comparatively easy! And I have experience putting together basic sites with all the elements in only ONE week or less.
5: Support
WordPress already powers 1 in 5 sites you visit on the web, and it’s still growing.
2014 was the first year that non-English downloads surpassed English downloads
WordPress.tv that contains filmed WordCamp presentations
6. Reliability
WordPress.com gets roughly the same number of monthly unique visitors that Facebook.com gets so up-time and security are big deals. The WordPress.com development team pushes updated code to the core between 60-80 times PER DAY, so both of those facts should give you a feel for just how reliable this service and software are.
If you choose to go self-hosted, however, all that depends primarily on your web host. But the following is a list of some of the top hosts in the world:
Step 2A: How does an LMS work and how can we use it?
define:Blended Learning/
Education that integrates online and in-person delivery with some element of student control over the time and place in which they access the course content.
I’m NOT an advocate for a strictly MOOC-style LMS. These systems conduct courses primarily online with minimal teacher-student interaction except via the forums. Granted, some teachers are very participatory in the forums, but not all are – and online forums still leave something to be desired compared to the traditional model of in-class, face-to-face, teacher-student and student-student interaction.
Besides that, MOOCs are COMPLICATED to implement, especially without a dedicated team behind them.
I feel that, at least as far as online course websites are concerned:
Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication.
Leonardo da Vinci
Therefore, when considering the following options for course website preparation, I’d recommend:
Level of Instruction: prepare a SINGLE course (at least a first)
Time (Schedule): allow a modified time schedule for students to access the site
Role of Online Components: enhanced
Teacher role: Teacher supports
Student role: Teacher-guided learning
Student support: School mentoring
Student to Teacher ratio: 2-3x Traditional
But, for simplicity’s sake, here are the TWO MOST PRACTICAL ways you can implement an LMS website in your classroom:
Go paperless
Make homework include online interaction
Step 2B: How can we use WordPress to create an LMS?
There are TWO options for using WordPress to create an LMS:
Is a hosting SERVICE where you can get a FREE site and username at their domain (http://yourname.wordpress.com)
Is limited in freedoms, but provides paid upgrades and is still a viable option for class websites
WORDPRESS.ORG
Hosts the (downloadable) SOFTWARE and all documentation, but you are required to find your own self-hosting solution (http://www.yourname.com)
Is virtually unlimited in customization options
If you go self-hosted, many of the top hosting providers offer a “One-Click Install” from the CPanel (Control Panel) of their site. It’s a simple matter of point-click-wait-5-minutes and you’ll have the FULL WordPress software up and running on your domain.
Here’s a list of recommended hosting providers again:
In WordPress, you will only need to understand (a minimum of) 5 key concepts to be able to effectively communicate the above 6 aspects to your students. They are:
Pages
Posts
Categories
Tags
Media
1. Pages
Pages are hierarchical, “stand alone” articles on your site. Though they have publication dates (and can be scheduled for automatic future publication), they do not “flow” as a blog would. Pages are not inherently “related” to each other and they ARE NOT categorized by Categories nor Tags (more later).
If you want a Page to have some kind of relation to another Page, you must assign it a “Parent” in the Page Attributes widget in the Page editor.
Pages will therefore act like individual menu items (they will be automatically added to your main menu if you don’t create one manually) – and “Parent” Pages will act as the top-level dropdown menu containing any “Child” Pages beneath them.
Pages may also utilize “templates”. These will give your Pages a different output on the front of the website and may look like any of the following:
Home page
Landing page
Contact page
Clients page
About page
Full-Width page
And so on
2. Posts
Posts are chronological (non-hierarchical) articles that “flow” along the Blog page, Home page, or Archive pages as they are written and published.
Posts are grouped together by Categories (that act like “buckets” or Folders), and Tags (keywords that are used to Search the site).
Posts may also utilize “Formats” that style certain Post types differently. For example, you may have different styles for:
Regular (Standard) Posts
Aside Posts (without a title visible on the Blog archive Page)
Image Posts
Video Posts
Quotation Posts
Link Posts
Gallery Posts
Status Update Posts
Audio Posts
Chat Posts
3. Categories
On the front-end of a site, Categories may be visible as Folder names for Month or Topic, or in the Breadcrumbs (the “You Are Here” collection of links at the top of a Post), or as individual Menu items.
(On the front-end, you won’t really be able to SEE the difference between Categories and Pages as they appear in the menu unless you click on the link. If it’s a Category, there will be a long list of Posts; if it’s a Page, there will be only ONE Page.)
With Categories, I usually assign each of my Classes to a separate Category. That way, when the students click on the Category name, they are taken directly to an ongoing blog list of ONLY Posts for their class.
4. Tags
On the front-end of a site, Tags may be visible in a “Tag Cloud” (a collection of frequently used keywords throughout the site), or in the footer meta (a collection of data at the bottom) of a Post. You can also Search for Tags as these are WordPress’s “keywords.”
With Tags, I usually add the keywords for the lesson subject – such as a grammar point we’re studying or the key concepts to understand.
5. Media
WordPress Media is unique in TWO primary ways:
You can Drag-&-Drop media from your Desktop directly into the Post editor window to upload files.
You can Copy-Paste URLs from popular websites like YouTube and Twitter to get immediate, automatic embeds of those videos and tweets (among other things). No more copying over embed codes!
The WordPress editor also provides you with a view of what your Post will ACTUALLY look like on the front-end even as you type it and before publishing it.
Step 3B: Plugins add Power
The above 5 functions are available both on WordPress.com and with the WordPress.org software. However, if you REALLY want to power-up your LMS, going self-hosted and installing your own plugins is the best way to go.
The following lists provide (at least) FOUR plugin options for EACH of the 6 aspects of learning previously discussed:
This post originated as “A Simple Roadmap to Get Up & Running with WordPress”, but it gradually morphed into something a tad more complex. So here is “A Comprehensive Overview of WordPress Site Owner Roles.”
While this post originated as “A Simple Roadmap to Get Up & Running with WordPress”, it gradually morphed into something a tad more complex, so we’ll call it “A Comprehensive Overview of WordPress Site Owner Roles.”
For starters, here’s a list of the different roles you can expect to have when you start and maintain a WordPress (or any other) website and the most basic tasks each will deal with (click any role to be taken directly to its description):
TECHIE:performs the initial installation of the website
Each of the roles above has its own complexities and full blog posts (even books) have been written about each one. But, I will try to keep this simple and focus primarily on the main 3-5 tasks or objectives that you will need to perform in each role on a BASIC level.
(I will also provide a list of 5-6 additional tangential considerations for each role that may yet sprout off into supplementary blog posts for each.)
1. Techie
Performs the initial installation of the website.
The 3 major tasks a “techie” must deal with are:
Domain name registration
Website hosting
File transfers (FTP Clients)
When running WordPress, you have TWO options for how to host your site:
WordPress.com = hosted on the WordPress.comservice & most of the hosting issues are taken care of for you through the service
WordPress.org = a software download that you install yourself (or through a third-party hosting company) on a domain of your choice (and purchase)
WordPress.com
Hosting your site on WordPress.com is pretty self-explanatory. You sign up for a FREE blog and create a username that becomes your blog’s initial URL (unless you upgrade) at yourname.wordpress.com. Simply head over to their new blog creation page and follow the steps to get started.
WordPress.org
Downloading the software from WordPress.org and installing it on your own site (for example, yourname.com) is slightly more complicated, but not by much. You have two simple options to get started:
(What is a One-Click Install? Simply: you choose the software you want to install, click “Install”, select the destination, and the webhost’s installer performs all the default installation steps for you. The next thing you’d do is visit your site and log in to your newly installed website system.)
A Spattering of Web hosting Providers
While whole blog posts have been written to guide users through the choice of a plethora of web hosting providers, I’ll simply provide a list with my own experience below:
Dreamhost.com – affiliate (I’ve been a happy customer since 2009 – service keeps improving – hosting around $10/month)
Bluehost.com (My second choice – hosting for as low as $3.95/month)
Hostgator.com (Another highly recommended company, though I have no direct experience with them – honestly their branding and logo didn’t meet the same quality as the previous two, so I didn’t bother getting to know them better)
GoDaddy.com (Most famous for Domain name registrations as far as I know though they do provide hosting as well)
WPEngine.com (A proprietary WordPress hosting provider – you’ll pay a premium but also get premium service)
Domain Name Registration services I’ve used
Dreamhost.com –*affiliate (I just like having domain name registry and hosting all together)
Nameboy.com (This is a good place to go if you have TWO keywords that you want to blend together in different combinations – including hyphenated options)
Namecheap.com (This site provides the greatest number of secondary TLD recommendations if your primary choice is not available)
TLD = Top-Level Domains
The original Top-Level Domains (introduced in the 1980s) were .com, .org, .net, .edu, .gov, .mil, and .int. Countries also have their own TLDs including .uk, .au, .kr, among others. And in the 2000s, particularly from 2012 and onward, 1000s more TLDs have been created so that when I go to register a new domain in Dreamhost (*affiliate), I can find a page that looks something like this:
Each TLD has its own unique price, though the majority are between $10-50 for a one-year registration. (But check out the price of .rich in the above image!)
Best Advice for Choosing a Domain Name
Keep it Simple, Silly.
5 Top Domain Naming Tips
Simple, sweet, and easy to remember is best
Your domain name should tell or stand for what you do and be recognizable
Hyphens, dashes, and underscores are allowable but add complexity
Extra long names are hard to remember
If you want exclusivity (and so no one can piggy-back off your name with a different TLD), buy ALL the major TLDs with your name, i.e. nike.com, nike.net, nike.org, nike.info, etc.
Lastly, a techie will deal with the uploading, downloading, transferring, and modification of blog files (installation files, images, videos, podcasts, etc). This will likely be an ongoing process, so you may as well get familiar with it now. The following is a list of FTP (File-Transfer Protocol) clients that I’ve used and recommend:
FileZilla (my #1 recommendation because it is cross-platform and well-designed)
CyberDuck (an FTP client I’ve used extensively on MacOSX – now also available for Windows)
2. Admin
Sets and manages up the backend of the website.
The 3 major tasks an “admin” must deal with are:
Username + Password
Site setup
Site management
To start off with, good username and password choice goes a LONG way to ensuring the safety of your blog.
2 Top Tips (Username + Password):
Username: NEVER EVER EVER EVER pick “admin” as your username. This is the old default WordPress admin name, so everybody (hackers) and their dogs (hacker dogs) know it. This will be the FIRST thing someone tries if they want to hack your site.(Too late? Create a new “admin” account with a new username, then transfer all the posts and content over to the new username and delete your old “admin” account. Or find out how to change the “admin” account in the database tables – phpMyAdmin – here.)
Password: “K33P C4LM AND 5P34K L337”
(i.e. “Keep Calm and Speak Leet” – Leet (L337) is kind of a techie way to write using numbers and symbols in place of letters that look similar)
5 Top Password Creation Tips:
Use a combination of UPPERCASE, lowercase, numb345, &$ymb@!$
Create a pattern that’s easily recognizable or memorable for you (like this guy did)
Use a site-specific “pass phrase“ rather than password (like “aaron@mydigitalH0M3”)
Longer is always better – shoot for 10+ characters
Avoid dictionary / common words / expressions / strings of numbers
Once the username and password are setup and you’ve logged in to your WordPress site, here is a list of the TOP FIVE first things that I personally see to:
The following are a list of additional topics that an Admin may need to deal with and be familiar with. Each one is worth its own (extensive) Post (or book), so I will revisit them later:
Website Security
Website Backups
Plugins
Site Management
User Management
Discussion Management
Media Management
Advanced Topics
Updates & Site Tools
3. Designer
Takes care of the frontend of the website.
3 primary tasks a “designer” should address are:
The WordPress Theme Customizer (front page style editing)
Menu Creation
Widget Assignment
First Steps (in the “Appearance” Menu)
Customize – In the WordPress Customizer you can modify a variety of frontend design elements including:
Site Title
Tagline
Colors
Header Image
Background Image
Menus (Navigation)
Widgets
Static Front Page (this means you set your front page to a specific Page and your blog archive to a different Page)
Menus – Tip: to make dropdown menus, simply click-and-drag one menu item (in your “Menu Structure” window) underneath and to the right of a preceding (its “parent”) menu item
Widgets – Tip: if you’ve enabled some widgets and want to save their Settings for later, there’s a location at the bottom of the “Available Widgets” area (called “Inactive Widgets”) that you can click-and-drag those widgets you want saved into
Detours (Later Topics)
The following are a list of additional Design topics that may be of interest and will be revisited in later Posts:
Theme Choice
Custom CSS
Custom HTML in Posts
Basic Graphic Design
Color Theory
Typography
Layout
Branding
4. Content Creator
Is responsible for pushing NEW content to the website on a regular basis.
The 3 most important things a “content creator” must understand are:
WordPress Media
The Difference between Posts and Pages
The Difference between Tags and Categories
It’s long been a mantra of the web: CONTENT IS KING and today is no exception. If you aren’t regularly pushing NEW and useful content to the forefront of the supersaturated Inter-webs, you’re missing a valuable opportunity and a good percentage of the consumer population. People are always on the look out for the “newest” or “hottest” so as a Content Creator, you’d really do yourself (and your audience) a good service if you regularly deliver that which they seek.
My own personal process for Content Creation looks like this:
Plan (5-30 min)
Research (30 min-1 hr)
Write (1-2 hrs)
Edit (10-30 min)
Publish (1 min)
So, my own process for blogging may take anywhere between 1-4 hours. I tend to put a lot of emphasis on getting facts right, delivering useful information, and back-linking to the things I find, so that can end up taking up a good chunk of my time.
Embeds : WordPress is capable of automatically embedding certain kinds of media from various webpages including videos, PDFs, presentations, and tweets – all you need to do is copy-paste the URL of a given page into your Post editor and WordPress handles the rest. A (non-comprehensive) list of sites is below:
Uploads : Uploading your own media to WordPress is as simple as clicking and dragging the item from your Desktop directly into the Post editor. The Media Uploader automatically pops up and gives you more options. You are able to change the file upload size in your WordPress settings, but by default the max upload size is 10MB or so.
Featured Images : A Featured Image (formerly known as “Post thumbnails”) is similar to a cover image for an article. Different themes handle these differently, but this is THE image that will primarily be associated with your Post (if you assign one) on your site and through Social Media when the Post gets shared. To add a Featured Image, scroll to the bottom of the sidebar in the Post editor page to find an Image Upload meta-box called “Featured Image.”
The Difference between Posts and Pages
Posts : non-hierarchical articles that are referenced chronologically and can be categorized by Tags and Categories
Pages : hierarchical articles that can be assigned “Parents” (those Pages that would form the head of a dropdown menu) and can NOT be categorized by Tags and Categories
The Difference between Tags and Categories
Tags : non-hierarchical keywords used for Searching (like “green”, “big”, “important”, etc)
Categories : create a kind of folder structure that can be used to subdivide articles (like “WordPress”, “Classes”, etc) – these ARE hierarchical
Detours (Later Topics)
The following are a list of additional topics that Content Creators may find of interest and will be revisited in later Posts:
The 3 main things a “developer” is likely to deal with are:
Custom CSS code
Custom HTML code within Posts & Pages
Child Themes
As getting into the details of a Developer’s work is far more complex than this Post warrants, here’s a list of further topics to be discussed later in subsequent Posts:
Detours (Later Topics)
Learn:
HTML
CSS
JavaScript
jQuery
PHP
MySQL
Understand:
WordPress Codex
Plugin Development principles
Theme Development principles
How to make contributions to the WordPress core
WordPress development best practices
Join the Discussion
I hope you enjoyed (and got a lot out of) this overview of the various roles a WordPress site owner needs to understand. If there are any questions, comments, or suggestions to improve this Post or for later topics to be covered, please leave me a Comment in the section below. Thanks!~