http://wordpress.tv Engage Yourself with WordPress.tv Mon, 28 May 2012 12:29:02 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.png http://wordpress.tv http://wordpress.tv/2011/10/07/videopress-for-self-hosted-wordpress-quick-start-guide/ http://wordpress.tv/2011/10/07/videopress-for-self-hosted-wordpress-quick-start-guide/#comments Fri, 07 Oct 2011 13:58:44 +0000 Michael Pick http://wordpress.tv/?p=8027 ]]>

]]> http://wordpress.tv/2011/10/07/videopress-for-self-hosted-wordpress-quick-start-guide/feed/ 3 43.062096 141.354376 43.062096 141.354376 Michael Pick g VideoPress For Self Hosted WordPress – Quick Start Guide http://wordpress.tv/2009/07/24/twitter-selfhosted/ http://wordpress.tv/2009/07/24/twitter-selfhosted/#comments Fri, 24 Jul 2009 12:23:11 +0000 Michael Pick http://wordpress.tv/?p=2173 Wickett Twitter plugin]]>

]]> http://wordpress.tv/2009/07/24/twitter-selfhosted/feed/ 14 Michael Pick g Adding Twitter to your Sidebar – Self Hosted Edition If you'd like to add your latest Twitter updates to your self-hosted WordPress blog, this tutorial will show you one way how. First of all, head to the Plugins menu and go to Add New. You're then going to want to run a search for "Wickett Twitter"— that's with two T's—and then run a search. Once you see that, scroll on over here to Install and click on the Install Now button. Next step: click on Activate Plugin and when that's been activated, you'll now find that you can use an extra widget in your widget selection, so head to Appearance » Widgets, and then added to the selection you'll now see that there's one for Twitter. So now, all I need to do is drag this into one or more of my sidebars, because I can actually show the results from more than one Twitter account. So I'm going to drop this here in my main sidebar and then give it a title. In this case, I'm going to call it "My latest tweets". Put in your Twitter username, and then you can decide to show either your— just your latest one, or anything up to twenty of your latest tweets. I'm going to just stick with the default five. You can also choose to hide replies: those "@username" replies to other people, if you just want to show the non-reply content. I'm going to leave that as it is, and then finally there's the option to show a little bit of text between the body of your tweet and the timestamp that follows it. So for instance, I'm just going to write down here "space – tweeted" and you'll see the results when we take a look at the live web site. So I've saved that up, and now let's have a look. Over here on the right in my sidebar, I've got my latest tweets, all of the information, and then after the body, I've got this word "tweeted" which I added—which is not necessary. Finally, there's the timestamps, so if I click on that, that will take me to Twitter. And that's it; all set up. http://wordpress.tv/2009/07/22/wordpress-com-adding-your-twitter-updates-to-your-sidebar/ http://wordpress.tv/2009/07/22/wordpress-com-adding-your-twitter-updates-to-your-sidebar/#comments Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:58:13 +0000 Michael Pick http://wordpress.tv/?p=2167 Twitter tweets to the sidebar of your blog, via the built in Twitter Widget. For self-hosted blogs, check out this video]]>

]]> http://wordpress.tv/2009/07/22/wordpress-com-adding-your-twitter-updates-to-your-sidebar/feed/ 32 Michael Pick g WordPress.com – Add your Twitter updates to your sidebar If you'd like to integrate your Twitter account into the sidebar of your WordPress.com blog, this is how you do it: head to the Appearance menu and click on Widgets. Then, down here at the bottom, you should see one for Twitter. So what you need to do is just drag that over into whichever sidebar you'd like your Twitter updates to appear in, and then it will give you some options to fill out. Give it a title to let people know what's happening— here I'm going to just put something nice and simple like "Tweets". Next up, you'll want to add your Twitter username, and if you have multiple sidebars you can also drag multiple widgets in, with different usernames if you have more than one Twitter account. So now we've got that sorted; the next thing we're going to look at is the maximum number of tweets to show, which is basically going to be anything from one— if you just want to show the latest update in your sidebar— right up to twenty, if you really want to show a full cross-section of your stream. I'm going to go with the default of five here. If you don't want to include replies to other people, and just your main messages, you can click here to hide all "@username" replies, and that will get rid of them for you. I'm probably going to keep that in there, because I think the conversation's what Twitter is all about. Finally, you can add some text to display between the tweet and the timestamp, which I'll show you in just a moment. For now, let's just save this one up and see how that looks in the sidebar of my blog. So here's how it looks live on my blog, and if I move over here to the right, you can see that I've got the latest tweets followed by the timestamp, that can be clicked through to take you to my Twitter stream. Now, if I wanted to add this little extra word here—a space, "tweeted", and then add another space— and in my live blog you'll see that it's now added between the message and the timestamp—just the word "tweeted". So that's it. A super-quick way to get Twitter into your WordPress.com blog. http://wordpress.tv/2009/07/22/import-your-wordpress-blog-into-facebook/ http://wordpress.tv/2009/07/22/import-your-wordpress-blog-into-facebook/#comments Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:44:48 +0000 Michael Pick http://wordpress.tv/?p=2163 ]]>

]]> http://wordpress.tv/2009/07/22/import-your-wordpress-blog-into-facebook/feed/ 76 Michael Pick g Adding your WordPress Blog to your Facebook account If you'd like to let your friends know about your latest blog posts via Facebook, you can add them to your Notes stream. Head to Application Settings in Facebook, and then head to the Notes option and click on that. Once that's open, you should see this page, and over on the right here, you can see "Import a blog". Once you've clicked on that, it's just a matter of entering the URL (the web site address) of your blog. If you like you can also put the feed URL, but it's not necessary, so I'm just going to put in here my WordPress blog, and it will automatically detect where the feed is, to bring that content in. Then, I just need to click here to start importing. After a couple of moments, I'll now see all of my content for review to make sure that I've got the right content coming in to my Facebook account. So I'll just have a quick scroll through—it's going to list all of the posts— and then right down at the bottom I'll see this: it says "Confirm Import". So, I'll click on that and you'll now see that on my profile I've got my latest notes— my latest blog posts—all there, so I can click through to those; I also have the option, if I scroll down to see the different ones that have been posted; people can add comments, just like they could to any other Facebook content, they can click on "Like", or they can share it with other friends. That opens up a new dialog where they can add their own little note and then post that. Also, as the owner of the blog, I can remove any of the content that I don't want to be included in my Notes stream, just by clicking on the Remove tabs here. Clicking through to a blog post displays the blog post in full, so people can read it then and there within Facebook; it's also possible if you scroll down to view the original post, which will take them to my WordPress blog. So that's getting started with WordPress integration with your Facebook account. http://wordpress.tv/2009/06/08/create-an-ecommerce-website-with-wordpress-in-under-5-minutes/ http://wordpress.tv/2009/06/08/create-an-ecommerce-website-with-wordpress-in-under-5-minutes/#comments Mon, 08 Jun 2009 01:36:44 +0000 Michael Pick http://wordpress.tv/?p=1929 Adam Purcell of Hungry Dog Media walks you through all of the steps needed to create your first eCommerce website with WordPress and the WP e-Commerce plugin]]>

]]> http://wordpress.tv/2009/06/08/create-an-ecommerce-website-with-wordpress-in-under-5-minutes/feed/ 143 Michael Pick http://wordpress.tv/2009/05/29/getting-started-with-google-analytics/ http://wordpress.tv/2009/05/29/getting-started-with-google-analytics/#comments Fri, 29 May 2009 02:08:23 +0000 Michael Pick http://wordpress.tv/?p=1916 Google Analytics makes it easy for you to track and keep tabs on the who, what, when, where, how and why of your blog's readers. This 4.5 minute video talks you through setting up Analytics for your self-installed WordPress blog. WordPress.com users will not to be able to follow along.]]>

]]> http://wordpress.tv/2009/05/29/getting-started-with-google-analytics/feed/ 68 Michael Pick g analytics-v3-web Who, what, when, where, why, and how: questions we ask pretty much every day. And as your blog grows in size—maybe even becoming part of your business— it makes sense to ask these questions about it, too. Google Analytics is a simple way of keeping track of who visits your site, what they do when they get there, when they show up, where they're visiting from, how they interact with your content, and even why they showed up in the first place. So instead of being in the dark about what works with your blog or what doesn't, you get a constant stream of information all about it. Throw in some easy-to-figure-out and rather pretty graphs, and you're all ready to manage your blogging empire faster than ever, with a bird's-eye view of what makes your readers tick. In this short video, we'll get you set up with Google Analytics for your self-hosted WordPress blog. First off, you'll want to head to: …and if that sounds like too much typing, just run a search for "analytics" in Google, and that will be the first result you see. When you get there, if you already have a Google account— maybe from Gmail, Google Calendar, or Google Reader, for instance— you'll want to sign in. If you don't have one, clicking over here will remedy that in about a minute. Once you're signed in, click here to sign up for the analytics service. You'll want to put in the URL of your blog, a name for your account, which could be the name of your blog or your name, or something about unicorns— whatever works for you. Set your country, and then your time zone, and click here on "Continue". On the next screen, you'll want to add some contact information. I'll spare you sitting through my filing out the form, but if you want to follow along, you can pause the video now to get this part done. Finally, I get the Terms of Service, which I need to agree to, and I get the option of editing the default data settings if I'm not comfortable. I click on "Create New Account", and the next thing I'll see is a chunk of code. This is important, so copy-paste it to a plain-text editor, but not a word processor like Word or Pages, or leave the window open in a tab of your browser. We'll come back to that in a moment. Now, to get set up with WordPress. There are two ways you could do this: manually, or via one of several plugins that streamline the process for you. To use a plugin, head to the Plugins » Add New section, and run a search on "Google Analytics". There are plenty to choose from, so if you decide to go this way, each has its own set of instructions. If you prefer to do things the manual way, without using a plugin, here's how to do it: You'll want to head back to Google Analytics and copy that chunk of code you were given to your Clipboard with a right or control-click. And then—back in WordPress—go to the Appearance menu and select the Editor option. Next, you'll want to open up the file called "footer.php" from the sidebar over here. When that appears in your editor, paste in the code you copied from Google Analytics just above the part that reads "</body>". Click to update the file and you're set. Now, back on the Google Analytics side, I'll click "Continue" and that will take me right to my account overview. I can see next to the name of my blog that the status icon here is telling me that the account hasn't synced up yet with WordPress. Don't let this worry you; it can take up to twenty-four hours to get up and running and start sharing the information you want to track. If—after that—you still have problems, check the inline help to make sure you did everything right. Analytics has a range of filters to help you track down the information you're looking for, as well as easy ways to add other blogs, web sites, and users to your account, in addition to offering customizable reports that can be sent out right to your email account. There's also a huge range of help documentation and videos that you can check out to get familiar with what's on offer and how to get the best out of your Google Analytics experience. Once you're set up, and your account is synced with your blog, you'll be able to drill down into information about who is using your site, how they're using it, where they're coming from, and a host of other useful information that will help you track and monitor the goals you have for your blog. So that's getting started with Google Analytics for WordPress: putting you in touch with the who, where, what, when, why, and how of your blog's visitors. http://wordpress.tv/2009/02/27/speed-up-wordpress-with-gears-for-internet-explorer/ http://wordpress.tv/2009/02/27/speed-up-wordpress-with-gears-for-internet-explorer/#comments Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:02:23 +0000 Michael Pick http://wordpress.tv/?p=1602 Firefox and Safari should you prefer. Best served in full-screen with HD on :)]]>

]]> http://wordpress.tv/2009/02/27/speed-up-wordpress-with-gears-for-internet-explorer/feed/ 1 Michael Pick g Speed up WordPress with Gears – Internet Explorer Version Speed up WordPress with Gears - Internet Explorer Version Gears is a little addition to your regular web browser that speeds along the way you use online applications like WordPress, making them more like the applications you run from your desktop like Word, Excel, iPhoto or Keynote. It does that by copying essential files over from the web to your computer so that every time you do something new, your computer doesn't need to pull 100% of the information from the web, every single time In the case of WordPress, that means that you can glide through tasks quicker than you could without Gears, whether you're using a WordPress.com blog, or self hosting your own WordPress So how do you get it up and running? This short video will show you how to get Gears installed in your browser of choice So the first thing you want to do is head to http://gears.google.com and when you're there - click on "Install Gears" Read through the terms and conditions if you feel that you must, and when you're good to go click on "Agree and download" and Internet Explorer will throw out a warning for you. Click up here for the options and choose "Download file" That's going to open up, and just click "Run" and you'll see that it runs automatically Click "Run" again and the bar will start doing its thing. Once its done you can restart your browser, and then you're going to want to head to WordPress So in WordPress, look for the Turbo button next to your name top right in the dashboard and then you're going to click on "Enable Gears" from this tools menu here. That's going to say "Do you trust this site?" - We do, because it's our blog, so I'm going to click "Yes" and then click "Allow" Then I'll see that updates, and this can take a while - I've actually sped this up, but once it's done you'll have a souped-up blog that's much quicker than before http://wordpress.tv/2009/02/13/adding-a-paypal-button-to-your-wordpresscom-blog/ http://wordpress.tv/2009/02/13/adding-a-paypal-button-to-your-wordpresscom-blog/#comments Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:41:49 +0000 Michael Pick http://wordpress.tv/?p=1529 different version of the video for self-hosted WordPress bloggers. You can access the PayPal graphics mentioned in the video from this page of the WordPress.com support site]]>

]]> http://wordpress.tv/2009/02/13/adding-a-paypal-button-to-your-wordpresscom-blog/feed/ 34 Michael Pick g Add a PayPal button to your WordPress.com blog Add a PayPal button to your WordPress.com blog If you'd like to add a PayPal button to your WordPress.com blog's sidebar, or into a post or page This video will show you how to get it done in a couple of minutes Head to PayPal.com. If you have an account you can login right here. Otherwise, you'll need to make one For the features we're looking at, you'll need a premiere or business account Once you're logged in, you'll see something like this and you'll want to click up here on "Merchant Services" Then you'll see a whole bunch of options, one of which is "Donations". Click on that. Put in a name here, either yours or one of your organization or blogs This what people will see when they come to the donate page And then, check out the customization options for the button that people will see when they click through to PayPal to make a donation. I can make it smaller, or choose to display credit card icons, or I can go ahead and add my own button image if I have something I'd prefer to use I can do that by uploading an image to my media library in WordPress, clicking "View" on the image, and then Right or Command-clicking to select "copy image address" or whatever your browser or operating system calls this feature. I then paste in the code I've copied here just like this. Once that's done I can set my currency and decide if folks can select their own amount, or if they'll use a fixed donation amount instead, like this And I might want to use this advanced customization option to add a message and set some rules for the person donating. Obviously the easier and friendlier I make it the more likely they are to go through with the donation As you can see, there are a whole bunch of customization options you can add here When you're done with those, click on the create button And from the two options I actually want to select the email tab, because the website one doesn't play nicely with WordPress.com I'm going to leave this page open, and then in a new tab or window, I'll open up WordPress and start a new post or page Now I'll switch to the HTML view and head for the WordPress.com support page about PayPal There's a link in the sidebar of this video or you can run a search for "WordPress.com support PayPal" in Google, for instance. There I'll find a bunch of different PayPal buttons I can use so I'm going to copy the code from here, and then put that into the HTML editor in WordPress - it has to be the HTML tab and not the "Visual Editor" If I want to use my own image, I can swap this part here with the URL of the image that I created earlier, like this So now, when I skip back to the visual editor I'll see either the PayPal button or the one I've created myself Now, back to the PayPal website where I have the link I want to copy I'll grab that, come back to WordPress and apply the link by selecting the image and using the link button in the visual editor If I want to add the button to my sidebar instead I could head back to the HTML tab copy the chunk of code here and then paste it into a Text widget Which I'll find in the Appearance > Widgets menu. Like this I can add any extra text that I like and when I'm ready I either need to save my widget or publish my page and in a post or page, it'll look like this Or, if I pasted it into a sidebar widget it'll look like this When someone clicks through, this is what they'll see So that's adding a PayPal button to your WordPress.com blog making it easy for people to donate to you http://wordpress.tv/2009/02/13/add-a-paypal-button-to-your-self-hosted-wordpress-blog/ http://wordpress.tv/2009/02/13/add-a-paypal-button-to-your-self-hosted-wordpress-blog/#comments Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:41:47 +0000 Michael Pick http://wordpress.tv/?p=1531 WordPress.com version of the video as the process is a little different]]>

]]> http://wordpress.tv/2009/02/13/add-a-paypal-button-to-your-self-hosted-wordpress-blog/feed/ 14 Michael Pick g Add a PayPal button to your self-hosted WordPress blog Add a PayPal button to your self-hosted WordPress blog If you'd like to add a PayPal donate button to your self-hosted blog, either in a post or page, or in the sidebar of your blog, this video will show you how in a couple of minutes First up, you'll need a PayPal account, and for this feature it needs to be a premiere or business account. If you have one sign in from PayPal.com, otherwise you'll need to get set up from one here. Once I'm logged in, I'll need to head to the merchants tab up here, and then scroll down to choose the "Donations" option here. It sometimes moves around with layout updates, but you'll find it in this section either way First, I'll add a name, which people will see when they donate. Otherwise it just shows my email address which looks kind of rubbish. And I can check the customization options out here, to tweak how I want the donate button to look I can even add my own image If I want to do that I can head to my media library in WordPress, click view on the image I've uploaded (or upload one first, obviously, via "Add New") And then right click on the image selecting the "Copy Image Address" or however that's phrased in your particular operating system or browser. Then back in the PayPal website, I just need to paste it here Next, I'll want to set my currency and decide if I want to fix the amount that people can donate or leave it up to them to decide how much they donate and it's a go idea to go into the "Advanced Customization" options down here, and change the default message and anything else that works for you You're probably more likely to get people to go through with the donation if that's the case. Once that's done I click on the create button and I'll see a chunk of text I can copy to my clipboard I can now paste this into a page or post, making sure I'm in the HTML tab of the editor for this part. You can always switch back to "visual" afterwards if you prefer to. Or, I can head to Appearance > Widgets, create a text widget and paste the code there instead if I want a sidebar donate button and that's it - once I'm published, I'll see a button in my sidebar... or, in my post or page When someone clicks through, they'll be taken to the page I customized through PayPal Advanced Customization, and Ta-Da! I'm good to go and start accepting donations on my blog So that's how to set up PayPal to work with your blog