In today’s session I and Bob Scott reported to the group on our experience working with Alex Gil to implement a site enhancement. The site enhancement was the introduction of a distinct page titled ‘Four Things’ to which any posting assigned the ‘four-things’ category (as its sole category) would go directly–bypassing the main blog posting page. We had already agreed that the four things exercise–in which each of us states the four things that he or she learned from each session–was a crucial part of our learning process. We also recognized, however, that there would be a certain amount of overlap or redundancy between these postings. Thus they would not be ideal for the main blog page that represents us to our general readership. Readers who are interested in the process aspects of our learning process, however, will value the newly implemented Four Things page.
Four Things I learned from today’s session (08-20-13):
- If there is room for debate about how something should be done in a Wordpress environment, the best approach is for one or more persons to build a prototype. That way the group can see what is being proposed.
- Being obliged to teach something to others really forces you to learn it yourself. For example: in order to report to the group on what Alex, Bob, and I did together to implement the Four Things page, I had to think very carefully, meet with Bob and Alex, and repeat the original steps. Hence most of my internalization of what we did took place not while we were doing it but afterwards when we were thinking about how we would explain it to the group.
- One simple approach to finding out how to accomplish something in Wordpress is simply to do a Google search beginning with word ‘wordpress.’ For example: wordpress posts skip main page You will need to evaluate the results you retrieve. Good answers can be found in the Wordpress Codex (the official user manual) or in forums. But you may find solutions that are far more complex than what you feel comfortable attempting. There are often a number of different ways to accomplish something in Wordpress. You typically want to go for the simplest. Don’t forget to consult with others in the group as needed.
- Familiarize yourself as much as possible with the organization and functions of the Wordpress administrative backend to our site–what is under Appearance, Settings, etc., and how it all works. You might be thinking of something as a problem for which you need to search for solutions, when it might simply be a function already available in the Wordpress administrative end of our site. Even if it is not already available, knowing what is available helps you to understand better the nature of proposed solutions when you do start looking for them.
