An Introduction to Using

WordPress to Build Your

Nonprofit Website

An Introduction to Using WordPress to Build Your Nonprofit Website

Who is John Haydon?

President / Founder of Inbound Zombie - a non-profit social media consultancy in Cambridge, MA

Speaker / Presenter: Techsoup.Org, Philanthopy.Com, NetworkForGood.Com and more...

Over 7 years of experience working with non-profits (plus 15 years of corporate sales and marketing)

Implement blogs, Facebook Pages, NING sites, BuddyPress sites

Training, Strategy and Bootcamps - WordPress, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, NING

Clients include: Techsoup.Org, EpicChange, Grassroots.Org, Share Our Strength, 12for12k

An Introduction to Using WordPress to Build Your Nonprofit Website

1. Isn’t WordPress just for bloggers?

2.What are examples of nonprofits wordpress websites?

3.How can WordPress help me get more traffic?

4.How can WordPress help me make a beautiful website with minimal effort?

5.What kinds of social media features come with a WordPress website?

6. Is it easy to make changes to my website without my webmaster?

7.What are the first steps to getting started with WordPress?

Questions we will answer today

An Introduction to Using WordPress to Build Your Nonprofit Website

Isn’t WordPress just for bloggers?

An Introduction to Using WordPress to Build Your Nonprofit Website

Isn’t WordPress just for bloggers?

22 out of every 100 new active domains in the US are running on

WordPresshttp://zmb.me/WordPressGrowth

An Introduction to Using WordPress to Build Your Nonprofit Website

What are examples of nonprofits

wordpress websites?

An Introduction to Using WordPress to Build Your Nonprofit Website

What are examples of nonprofits wordpress websites?

An Introduction to Using WordPress to Build Your Nonprofit Website

What are examples of nonprofits wordpress websites?

An Introduction to Using WordPress to Build Your Nonprofit Website

What are examples of nonprofits wordpress websites?

An Introduction to Using WordPress to Build Your Nonprofit Website

How can WordPress help

me get more traffic?

An Introduction to Using WordPress to Build Your Nonprofit Website

An Introduction to Using WordPress to Build Your Nonprofit Website

How can WordPress help me get more traffic?

Businesses and orgs that blog get 126% more traffic than those

that don’thttp://zmb.me/BloggingStudy

You Readers

Why should my nonprofit start a blog?

An Introduction to Using WordPress to Build Your Nonprofit Website

You Readers

Why should my nonprofit start a blog?

An Introduction to Using WordPress to Build Your Nonprofit Website

How can WordPress

help me make a

beautiful website with

minimal effort?

An Introduction to Using WordPress to Build Your Nonprofit Website

An Introduction to Using WordPress to Build Your Nonprofit Website

How can WordPress help me make a beautiful

website with minimal effort?

WordPress Plugins

An Introduction to Using WordPress to Build Your Nonprofit Website

1. W3 Total Cache – Makes your pages load faster.2. Gravity Forms – This is without question the best WordPress plugin for forms.3. BackupBuddy - Automatically back up your site4. SEO Smart Links – Do you inter-link your articles? You should. Linking within an article to other

articles is a great way to build Page Rank throughout your site and it’s a great way to get readers to find your other articles on similar subjects. This plugin will interlink keywords to your other articles for you.

5. Digg Digg Social Sharing – This simply WordPress plugin is what powers the floating social icons to the left of each post here at Site Sketch 101. With an easy to access Twitter icon, your friends and readers will be able to easily share and promote your content.

6. Feedburner Circulation – The era of the feedburner chicklets are over. Install the Feedburner Circulation WordPress plugin and you’ll be able to display your subscriber count just as you see in the top right corner of this page.

7. Revision Control – With the revisions feature of WordPress, it doesn’t take long for your database to get bloated and begin slowing down your site. With the Revision Control WordPress Plugin you can limit the number of post revisions that remain in storage. I have mine set to 2.

8. WordPress Editorial Calendar – This plugin provides a crisp, clean editorial calendar of your posts both past and present. You can drag and drop articles from one date to another, edit them and much more. This is an amazing organizational tool.

9. Facebook Social Plugins - Facebook10.Tweetmeme - Twitter11.All In One SEO - Automatically optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine

Optimization).12.Readability Plugin - Allows you to verify that your posts are easy to read.•

Recommended Plugins

An Introduction to Using WordPress to Build Your Nonprofit Website

What are the first

steps to getting started

with WordPress?

An Introduction to Using WordPress to Build Your Nonprofit Website

1. Choose A Hosting Provider. There are many differences between a WordPress.com (free)

and a WordPress.Org blog. You want the .Org – the hosted blog. WordPress has a great list of

hosting providers that support a 1-click install of WordPress.

2. Pick A Domain. Picking a domain will be one of the most important decisions you will make

regarding your blog. You want to pick a domain that is short enough for people to write down,

but long enough to contain a keyword or two that you want to rank for on Google. Finding a

domain name that isn’t taken yet will take some patience and creativity, but f you choose to

use a Subdomain for your blog, you can pick whatever URL you like.

3. Install WordPress. If you’re not that technical, go with the 1-click install of WordPress as

demonstrated in this video.

4. Choose a Theme. There are hundreds of free themes and a few very good premium Themes

(Headway is what I use on all my blogs). The main difference between free and premium

themes is design flexibility. Premium themes will give you many more design configurations

to choose from as you and your blog grow. Free themes give you less choices.

5. Create Basic Pages. Create a few basic pages in your blog. Pages, by the way, are different

from Posts. The basic ones to start with would be an About Page, a Contact Page and a

Subscribe Page.

An Introduction to Using WordPress to Build Your Nonprofit Website

6. Setting Permalink Structures. The default permalink structure in WordPress relies on the

post ID, which is a unique number for each post.If you want to get found on Google, post ID

is not the way to do it. Choose a permalink structure that is keyword rich, like categories

and post names. If you’re not sure how to do this, watch “How To Create SEO-Friendly

Permalinks“.

7. Add Essential Plugins. There are a gazillion WordPress plugins out there to choose from,

depending on what your goals are for your blog. A good list of essential ones can be found

here.

8. Create Basic Pages. Create a few basic pages in your blog. Pages, by the way, are

different from Posts. The basic ones to start with would be an About Page, a Contact Page

and a Subscribe Page.

9. Set An RSS Feed Service. You’ll want to use a service like Feedburner or Feedblitz, which

are both free. These services add social media and promotion elements to a basic feed.

10.Start Blogging. If you’re scared, read Michael Martine’s series on dealing with Blogging

Fears.

An Introduction to Using WordPress to Build Your Nonprofit Website

Questions?At http://facebook.com/

charityhowto

An Introduction to Using WordPress to Build Your Nonprofit Website

Discount:15% discount by using “WordPress” in the

shopping cart at http://charityhowto.com

An Introduction to Using WordPress to Build Your Nonprofit Website