Types of Wordpress installations
- Wordpress.com - Free but limited. This is a limited version of Wordpress that is already installed and hosted through Wordpress.com's hosting platform. It comes with a few default plugins and widgets but you can't install new plugins and widgets. The URL of this site will be a subdomain of wordpress.com but if you want a unique domain you can pay extra and purchase/map a domain through wordpress.com
- Self-hosted Wordpress - This is a full-scale version of Wordpress that you can download and install on your host. Many hosts have an option to install wordpress on their servers and some even offer Wordpress specific hosting packages. The benefit of installing Wordpress is that you can install any plugin or widget but it puts the work on your to keep it updated and manage the install.
Hosting
Bluehost: the most commonly used hosting provider for Wordpress. You can also purchase your domains on Bluehost. Tips: 1. It would be cheaper to renew the hosting package once a year than once a month2. There are a lot of good deals for hosting and domain purchasing around Black Friday. We got our domain with 40% off discount!
Themes
Listify: a Yelp-like Wordpress theme. Not very customizable but has good-looking UI and detailed documentation.
Other Wordpress topics
- What to do with your Wordpress Site Crashes: Lots of times this is due to a theme or plugin not be up-to-date or one of these are incompatible with each other. The best thing to do if you can't log into the admin dashboard is FTP into the server on your host and navigate to your plugins folder where all plugins are installed. Renaming this folder to something else (e.g. plugins-backup) will inactivate the plugins that are likely causing the site to crash. You then should be able to log in the admin dashboard and update plugins and themes. After this start with activating one plugin at a time (starting with most critical). As you activate each plugin refresh and monitor the site. If the website crashes again you may assume the latest activated plugin is the culprit. At this point read documention or forums to find out if the theme or plugins are old and haven't been supported. Also see if there are known incompatibilities. You can either avoid that theme or plugin or ensure you have a compatible version. Always feel free to call your hosting company to ask for their thoughts.
- When you can't find an existing plugin that will accomplish what you want, you can always make a custom plugin. Plugins are written in PHP. You can create a template plugin from this site to act as a boilerplate starting point: http://wppb.me/
- Uploading a new plugin to Mac - (may not apply to every wordpress, but read guide for details) - UploadingNewPlugin(Mac).docx
- Tip on editing themes - When editing the WordPress theme, best practices say to use a child’s theme. A child’s theme is a copy of the regular theme which helps protect the integrity of the parent theme. Changes are made to the child’s theme instead of the parent theme so that changes can be easily reverted if needed. More information can be found here.
General Tips
When using pre-built websites and plugins (like WordPress), it is extremely important to have a lot of detailed documentation on the ins and outs of the platform, as well as easy customization.
Don’t underestimate the complications that can arise from using a Platform like WordPress, a plugin was able to break our website.
Having a technical client can be a double-edged sword. Make sure to clarify if they are going to be making changes to the website along with your team and if so have clear communication of new changes so someone’s work doesn’t get deleted.
Daily standups are a helpful habit to get into, helps keep team members focused and accountable.
Creating a Community Management Platform
The following plugins for WordPress have been tested thoroughly; here are our reviews on them:
Ultimate Member:
great for advanced registration fields and user search
has great documentation
easy to customize and build pages
has multiple extensions for purchase
Users Ultra Pro:
requires more knowledge of CSS to customize
registration form customization
the paid version has great functionality
BuddyPress:
very confusing to customize
look and feel of the plugin is not aesthetically pleasing
Membership by Supsystic:
great free option if an advanced user search is not a requirement
very clean UI
easy to customize and build pages
Profile Grid:
great free option if an advanced user search is not a requirement
has great concepts for groups
Ning is a community building platform and advertises itself as great for creating social networks, however, it is fairly difficult to customize as there is no option to customize HTML and is lacking updated documentation.