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Never Stop Learning WordPress with WP101

Win a Free “Never Stop Learning” T-shirt from WP101

Who doesn’t love an inspiring new geek tee?

We’re at WordCamp Austin this weekend, joining about 450 other WordPress users from every level of expertise, all of us here to learn more about WordPress.

If you’ve never attended a WordCamp, we highly recommend you find one near you (here’s a list) and connect with other WordPress users. You’ll make memories, have a blast, and learn how to use WordPress more effectively.

No matter how much you think you know, there's always more to learn. #NeverStopLearning #WordPress
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To commemorate this weekend of learning, we’re giving away three of our brand new WP101 t-shirts.

To be entered to win, simply “Click to Tweet” any of the quotes from this page anytime on Saturday, May 18th.

We’ll pick three winners from a randomized list of your entries on Sunday, the 19th to receive one of our hot new tees.

Winners will be posted right here on this page, so stay tuned!

Feel free to compose your own Tweet, as long as it contains these three ingredients:

  1. The hashtag: #NeverStopLearning
  2. The hashtag: #WordPress
  3. Our Twitter handle: @WP101

Good luck, and thanks for helping us spread the word about WordPress and WP101!

Learning is sexy. Learning WordPress is sexier still. #NeverStopLearning #WordPress
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Ooh. I want to win one of these cool #NeverStopLearning t-shirts! #WordPress
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WP101.com is by far the easiest way to learn how to use WordPress! #NeverStopLearning #WordPress
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10 Reasons Why You Should Never Host Your Own Video

10 Reasons Why You Should Never Host Your Own Videos

Picture this scenario…

You’ve just created your first video for your site, and you’re ready to share it with the world. You’re impressed with how it turned out, if you do say so yourself.

You open your web browser and log into your WordPress dashboard. Then, you create a new post and choose the “Video” post format. You write a bit of text about your video, then upload your video to the Media Library, just like you’ve done dozens of times when you added images to your posts.

“Huh… that’s taking a while to upload,” you think to yourself. “But I suppose that makes sense. This video is almost ten minutes in length, and is nearly 100 MB in size.” You lean back in your chair while the file finishes uploading, and begin to get excited about everyone’s reaction to your video. The file’s finally uploaded, and everything looks good to you. “That was easy!” you think to yourself.

You click publish, and then send out a Tweet and a Facebook post containing a link to your video post, inviting everyone to take a look at your first video.

That’s when it starts to go wrong.

Before you even return to your site, feedback begins to trickle in…

“Tried to watch your video, but it just stopped playing after a few seconds.”

“Hey, I see where your video should be, but all I get is a black box.”

“I can’t play your video from my mobile device.”

That’s odd. It worked fine for you earlier. You go to your site to pull up the video for yourself to see what the fuss is about, and you notice that the page takes forever to load. Why is your site suddenly so slow?

How are other folks doing this? You’ve watched hundreds of web videos on other sites and never encountered these issues.

What’s happening?

Just because you can  upload a video to your WordPress site doesn’t mean you should.

Read more →

Genericons. A free, GPL, icon font.

Genericons — a free, GPL, icon font for your site.

Automattic has released a free icon font for use in your own projects.

Genericons is a set of very clean, vector-based icons embedded in a webfont, which can be scaled to any resolution, or even styled with CSS.

The upcoming theme, Twenty Thirteen, which will be included in WordPress 3.6 makes use of Genericons, so check out the demo of that theme to see it in action.

To make it even easier to begin using Genericons, Mika Epstein has already released a plugin called Genericon’d. Install the plugin, and then begin using either HTML or simple shortcodes to display Genericons in your posts, pages, and widgets.

If you’re looking for a free set of icons to use in your site or other project, look no further than Genericons.

Introduction to WordPress Custom Fields and Meta Data

Custom fields enable you to create meta data — additional bits of information that can be used within your posts, pages, or custom post types.

Meta Valuables, by Clark WimberlyIf you found this video helpful, you’ll want to check out the excellent e-book, Meta Valuables, by Clark Wimberly. This 45-page handbook is loaded with real-world examples, code samples, and quick tips that will have you developing more dynamic templates in no time!

WordPress includes many different ways to store and access data. One of those is meta data, which can unlock a whole new world of functionality in your WordPress site. In just a few steps, you can do some pretty amazing things with meta data and custom fields.

Covered in this video:

  • What is meta data?
  • Using custom fields to create new meta data.
  • Displaying meta data within your theme file.

“The truth is that you can do pretty much anything you want with meta data. Your imagination is your limit.”—Justin Tadlock

What’s New in WordPress 3.4?

WordPress 3.4 is currently at the Release Candidate phase has just been released! This brief video provides a quick tour of the new features included in WordPress 3.4, including Live Preview, the new Theme Customizer, auto-embeds for Tweets, and more.

Which new feature are you the most excited about? Tell us in the comments below…

For a more in-depth look at all the new “under the hood” features, check out “10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 3.4,” by Aaron Brazell.
Our Series Has Been Updated for WordPress 3.4!WordPress version 3.4 only required us to re-record one video this go-around. The “Appearance” menu options were the only area that received significant updates this time, and those new features are covered in this new video.

I’m certain we’ll be completely re-recording the entire video series again with the release of 3.5, as we have with every other release of WordPress since this site launched 3 ½ years ago. Hope you enjoy the new video!

wpengine

We’re Moving to WP Engine!

Updated March 23: The migration is now complete, and it appears everything is running smoothly, as well as more than three times as fast as our previous host. Thank you to the WP Engine team for helping make this a smooth transition!

Why are we moving?

For some time now, we’ve been experiencing difficulties with our current host. In addition to several outages in recent months, they also recently discovered a security vulnerability in the Plesk software that powers their dedicated virtual servers. This vulnerability resulted in our site being hacked temporarily, even though we’re fanatics about security, always running the latest version of WordPress, and keeping our plugins up to date at all time.

Although we’ve been a customer for years, we received horrible support during this experience, as well as several unrelated incidents recently. This was the last straw for us, so we’ve been carefully comparing WordPress-specific hosts over the past month, and we’re finally ready to make a switch!

Why WP Engine?

There are a number of reasons why we’ve decided to partner with WP Engine for our hosting…

  1. Speed. Since their servers are specifically configured for WordPress sites, they can offer speed that other hosting providers simply can’t provide. After migrating a couple of other sites to WP Engine, I’ve noticed a dramatic reduction in page load times. I can’t wait to see how WP101 functions on their servers!
  2. Security monitoring. WP Engine automatically scans and repairs hacking attempts on their client’ sites. They employ a number of security measures to ensure your site doesn’t get hacked in the first place, and then they continually monitor your site for hacks. If it still gets hacked, they’ll fix it for free! Given our recent woes with regard to this, I’m happy to bring some help on board in this area!
  3. Automatic backups. WP Engine provides drop-dead simple, one-click backup and restore options — at no extra charge. Peace of mind at no extra charge.
  4. Automatic WordPress updates. WP Engine automatically installs WordPress security and maintenance upgrades, so we won’t have to worry about keeping your site up to date.
  5. The people are the thing. Perhaps most important, the primary reason we’ve decided to go with WP Engine is because of our shared commitment to the WordPress community and a growing relationship with members of their team. In the end, the people make the difference, and I’ve been more than impressed with each interaction with their folks. Customer service and support like this is rare.

Constantly improving to serve our members better.

We’re committed to continually improving WP101, and this move will provide our members with a much faster experience. Faster page load times also translate to better SEO, improving our rankings in the search engines, and helping more folks to discover our tutorials.

What this means to you…

We’re planning to migrate the site tomorrow evening, beginning at 10 PM CST. At that time, we’ll disable registrations for new members, since there will be a brief window of time when the two servers won’t be in sync. Existing members will not be impacted, and can continue to access the videos throughout the entire transition.

This migration should be transparent to our members; at most, you’ll be prompted to log in once again on the new server.

WP Engine - Fast, secure, WordPress hostingLearn more about WP Engine

To learn more about WP Engine, and even conduct your own speed comparison to see how much faster your site will run on their WordPress-optimized servers, visit: WPEngine.com*

Check Out WP Engine →

*Affiliate link.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to WordPress

The Complete Idiot's Guide To WordPressEven though most of our members prefer to learn how to use WordPress via our online tutorial videos, many folks still like to keep a book or two handy for use as a reference guide. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to WordPress provides users of both the WordPress.com hosted blogging service and the self-hosted application at WordPress.org with everything they need to know to create, customize, manage, and share their WordPress site with the world.

At a whopping 464 pages—divided into 6 parts and 24 chapters—it is one of the most in-depth WordPress tutorial books on the market today.

While we’ve recommended other tutorial books like Beginning WordPress 3 by Stephanie Leary, or the classic WordPress For Dummies, by Lisa Sabin-Wilson, The Complete Idiot’s Guide To WordPress is aimed squarely at beginners. In fact, it isn’t until the second half of the book that the self hosted version of WordPress is covered. As such, it’s a perfect introduction to blogging, site-building, and using WordPress.

The author, Susan Gunelius, is President and CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications and branding company. She is also the author of five books.

The first two sections of the book cover some basics, including a whole chapter dedicated to the differences between the WordPress.com fully-hosted service and the self-hosted version available for download from WordPress.org. The entire third part of the book covers WordPress.com, and takes up more than a third of the book. Since many of the core features and functions of the WordPress Administration Area are common to both versions, users of the self-hosted version are sure to find this information useful as well.

The second half of the book covers the self-hosted version of WordPress, and covers “beginner” topics such as how to register a domain name, finding a quality web host, and learning how to use FTP. Then, Susan walks the reader through how to configure and set up WordPress, and explains how themes and plugins work (along with some plugin recommendations).

The final parts of the book focus on search engine optimization, building a community, and how to monetize your blog using advertising and affiliate programs.

If you’re looking for an introduction to blogging and WordPress, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to WordPress is a perfect place to start!

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