Wordpress Communication Lecture

purchase the Custom Design upgrade, you can also modify your new WordPress.com
blog’s colors, fonts and even your CSS if you choose.
 Post to your blog by email
To post by email, you just need to generate an email address for your blog within
your dashboard and then you can get started right away. Our post by
email document will walk you through the process. You can add galleries, tags,
videos, slideshows, polls, and so much more, all via email!
 Upload or embed other file types
 Add audio to your WordPress.com blog
You can add mp3 files to your blog by in a number of ways; using a handy shortcode,
the SoundCloud player, or alternatively, to upload an audio file directly to your
blog’s media library you can grab the Space Upgrade.
 Add video to your WordPress.com blog
We currently support adding videos from a variety of sources, such as YouTube,
Vimeo, Ted, Flickr and many more. Furthermore, you can get
the VideoPress upgrade to enable you to upload your own videos directly to your
blog.
 WordPress.com has support for a multitude of filetypes. Additionally, you can embed
documents for viewing within your posts using a service like Cloudup.

Moving a Blog

You can find step-by-step guides below that will help you move your site to WordPress.com,
move to a self-hosted WordPress site, move between WordPress.com blogs, transfer your
site to another WordPress.com user, and redirect visitors to your new site.

Moving to WordPress.com

Move To WordPress.com

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Moving to WordPress.org

Move To a Self-Hosted WordPress Site

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Moving Between WordPress.com Blogs

Change Your Blog Address

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Transferring Your Blog to Another WordPress.com User or Account

Transfer Your Site To Another User

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Setting Up a Redirect to Your New Domain

Site Redirect

Moving from a Self-Hosted WordPress
to WordPress.com

If you would like to move your self-hosted WordPress.org site over to WordPress.com, you
can follow the guidance on the following pages. Navigate to the next step by clicking on the
page numbers at the bottom of the screen, or, to view all of the steps on a single page, click
“View All”:

Get Started

If you haven’t already, create a WordPress.com user account and blog
at https://wordpress.com/start

Export

In your old self-hosted WordPress.org site, go to Tools → Export and download
the .xml (WXR) file to your computer.

Import

To import the .xml file WordPress blog into your current site, go to My Site →
Settings and select the Import tab. Drag your .xml file into the box, or click the box to
browse to the file on your computer.

To import content, drag your .xml file in the box

Once the file has finished processing the uploaded file, click the Start Import button. You
will be asked to reassign the authors of the imported items to an existing user on the new
site before starting the import process.

Note, if you had more than one author on your site and wish to keep your content assigned
to the same authors: invite the user to your site on WordPress.com prior to import. This will
allow you to assign the posts to the correct author. Inviting the users will require they have a
WordPress.com account.

Check

Check that all of your content and images have been moved over to your new site.

Domain Mapping

Connect your domain name from your old site to your new WordPress.com site
with Domain Mapping.

Offline Editing

There are several desktop applications which you can use to write and publish content for
your WordPress.com blog, even without being connected to the internet. You may often
hear this referred to as “offline editing.”

WordPress.com supports the major posting standards, such as the MetaWeblog API, so you
should be able to use most applications that you come across. Here are a few offline
editors/publishers you can try:

Mac

 Ecto
 MarsEdit
 Bits
 Blogo

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Windows

 Windows Live Writer
 BlogJet
 Microsoft Word (2007 or newer)

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Linux

 QTM

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Multi-platform

 Shareaholic (Firefox Add-on)

These applications may ask for something like an XML-RPC (or API) endpoint, which will
be your blog domain followed by “xmlrpc.php". So, for example, if your blog was
at matt.wordpress.com, your endpoint would be:

https://matt.wordpress.com/xmlrpc.php

Any desktop application will also require a username and password – this is the same
username and password that you use to login to WordPress.com.

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Official WordPress.com apps

Did you know you could take your homepage and edit your site right from your desktop and
mobile? Our apps are available on the following platforms and you can download them
from apps.wordpress.com:

 Mac OS X
 Windows (7+)
 Linux
 iOS
 Android



Offline Editing »Windows Live
Writer

Windows Live Writer (WLW) is a blog publishing application developed by Microsoft. It is
compatible with WordPress.com, giving our users an easy and convenient way to manage
and compose their blog posts. WLW has many features that make blog writing a breeze:

 Add multiple blogs from different accounts
 WYSIWYG editor to give you an instant preview of your blog post using your current

theme
 Supports offline editing and post scheduling
 Ability to add images and control size and placement
 Video uploads via Youtube
 Category and author management
 Ability to set post or page slugs, category, author and password

Setting Up Windows Live Writer 2012

Time required: 8-12 minutes

Before you install Windows Live Writer 2012, please make sure you have an active
WordPress.com blog. If you don’t already have one, you can sign up to get a new blog in
seconds.

Windows Live Writer 2012 is included in the Windows Live Essentials setup program. You
may download it here:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-live/essentials

Select “Choose the programs you want to install.”

Uncheck everything except for Writer. Click Install. You may be prompted to restart your
computer once the install completes.

Note: Please be patient during installation. It can take several minutes for the process to
finish.

You can find the new program in your Start Menu. Go to All Programs > Windows Live
> Windows Live Writer.

When you start Windows Live Writer for the first time, you’ll be prompted to configure the
program to connect to your blog. If your blog is set to private, you’ll need to temporarily
change that setting to be able to add it successfully. Go to Settings > Reading in your
dashboard and set your blog’s Site Visibility setting to “Discourage search engines
from indexing this site“.

 In the screen, “What blog service do you use?”, select WordPress and click Next.
 Under “Add a blog account”, enter your WordPress.com blog address, user name,

and password, then click Next.
If Windows Live Writer cannot detect your blog settings, a screen titled “Select blog type”
will appear.

 Type of blog that you are using – make sure WordPress.com is selected from the
dropdown box.

 Remote posting web address for your blog – only change <blogname> to
your actual blog name. The URL needs to end in xmlrpc.php.

Once you select your blog type, you’ll be prompted to Download your Blog Theme. This lets
you preview how your blog posts will look like with your current theme. Click Yes to
proceed with the download. Note that if your blog is set to private, the download will not be
successful. Please disable that setting temporarily (in Settings > Reading) to enable this
feature.

The final screen should say “Your blog has been set up.” If you’d like, you may edit the Blog
nickname before clicking Finish.

Afterwards, you should see an [untitled] post screen. On the Home tab, your Blog nickname
from the previous screen will appear next to the Publish button. If you prefer your blog to
remain Private, go back to Settings > Reading to revert to that setting.

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Notes on Compatibility

The latest version of Windows Live Writer was released in 2012. It is currently not in
development and its future status is unknown. There may be compatibility issues as
WordPress.com implements new functionality.

SEO Tools

Optimize your site for search engines and social media by taking advantage of our SEO
tools. This feature is only available in the WordPress.com Business Plan and the Jetpack
Professional Plan for your self-hosted site.

Front Page Meta Description

Meta descriptions are a general overview of the contents of your site. Search engines
sometimes use this information to determine the site’s relevance for specific searches. This
meta description setting applies to your site’s front page only.

They have limited space on search result pages — about 160 characters. You can use
this tool from Portent to calculate and preview your description.

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Custom Post Meta Description

Typically, search engines will pick up on the post content and use that as the description
that is displayed in the search results. With SEO Tools you can customize the meta
description to be something different to both catch the eye of the reader and potentially
increase the search page ranking of the post.

To customize the description, expand the ‘SEO Description’ drop down at the right side of
the editor and then enter the custom description you would like to use. Upon saving the post
you should see the description update on most search engines within a few hours.

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Custom Title Formats

To help improve your search page ranking, you can customize how your content titles
appear for your site. You can reorder items such as ‘Site Name’ and ‘Tagline’, and also add
custom separators between the items.

To access the title format editor, visit https://wordpress.com/settings/traffic.

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Search and Social Previews

Before you publish your new post or page, you can use the SEO preview tool to see how it
will look on search engines and social media.

The previews will use the custom description you set in the Advanced SEO meta description
settings so you can get an idea on how it will look on the WordPress.com Reader, Google,
Facebook and Twitter. To view the SEO Preview, just click the ‘Preview’ button in the editor
and then select the SEO Preview tab.

Site Logo

Ever wish you could add a logo to your site? With the Site Logo feature, you can set your
logo once, and it will display perfectly for most themes no matter how often you change
themes.
Watch the video below for a quick overview of how it works, and read below for more
examples and settings.

Adding your Site Logo

1. Open My Sites → Customizer and click on the Site Identity section.
2. In the section that opens out, click the Add Logo button to open the Media Manager.
3. Upload a new image, or select one that’s already in your Media Library.
4. Click Set as logo, and you will see your logo appear in the preview window.
5. Click the Save & Publish button at the bottom right of the Customizer to activate the

logo on your site.

Adding a logo in the Site Title section of the Customizer.

Changing or Removing your Logo

Once a logo has been set, you can change or remove it using the Remove
Logo and Change Logo buttons. Once you’re satisfied, be sure to click the Save &
Publish button at the bottom right to preserve your logo settings.

Change or delete a site logo hide or show site title and description.

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Hiding the Site Title and Description

Above the Site Logo selection tools in the Customizer, you will see a checkbox
labelled Display Site Title and Tagline. To hide your site title and description, leaving
just the logo, uncheck this box. Be sure to click Save & Publish to make it active on your
site.

Theme Support

To see all the themes that are supported, check out the Site Logo filter on the Theme
Showcase.

Third Party Applications

WordPress.com allows you to connect with third-party applications that extend your
WordPress.com site in new and cool ways.

This is done in a secure fashion so you can revoke and manage access to your account at any
time and third party sites will not need your password.

How Do I Connect To An Application?

To securely connect to WordPress.com:

1. On the website or application that you want to connect to, find a button or link asking
you to connect to WordPress.com.

2. Click on the Connect link, which will bring you to WordPress.com. You will be asked to
login. You can verify you are are on WordPress.com and secure by checking that the
URL starts with https://public-api.wordpress.com.

3. Once you’re logged in, approve the application by clicking “Authorize.” If you have
multiple blogs you can select which blog you would like to grant access to.

4. You’re now connected!

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View connected applications

1. To view details of your connected applications or revoke access, click on your Gravatar in
the upper right.

2. Select the Security option in your settings.

3. Click on the Connected Applications option at the top of the page.
4. On this page, you’ll see all of your connected applications.

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How Do I Revoke Access I've Granted to an Application?

1. Access the list of verified applications by clicking on your Gravatar in the upper right.

2. Select the Security option in your settings.
3. Click on the Connected Applications option at the top of the page.
4. Revoke access by clicking the Disconnect button to the right of the application.

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Security

Some applications may still ask you for your username or password. You should only
provide these details to services that you can trust such as mobile/desktop applications like
WordPress for iOS. Never provide your username and password to third party sites
claiming to get you followers and readers quickly or that you don’t recognize or can’t verify.

Transferring a Site to Another
WordPress.com Account

You can transfer ownership of a site to another WordPress.com account by following the
step-by-step instructions below.

The instructions from this guide are referring to the WP Admin dashboard. You can get to
this dashboard by adding /wp-admin to the end of your site’s url (e.g.:
example.wordpress.com/wp-admin)

Step 1

Open the My Blogs page. Move your mouse over the site you would like to transfer and click
the Transfer Blog link that appears. You will only see the option to transfer a site if
you own it.

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Step 2

Carefully read the warning message. If you wish to continue with the transfer, click the box
next to “I understand, now let me continue”

In the box that appears, enter the username or email address of the WordPress.com user
you wish to transfer the site to, then click Transfer Blog.

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Step 3

Check the inbox of the email address your WordPress.com account is registered to. Open the
email we’ve sent you and click the link it contains to finish the transfer.

Your blog transfer will not be completed until you click the link.

You will see a confirmation message once your transfer is complete.

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Transferring a blog with a domain upgrade

If you want to transfer a blog and you also own a custom domain on the same blog, you will
first need to transfer the domain to the blog’s new owner before you’ll be able to transfer
ownership of the blog itself. You can find the instructions to do that here.
If you forget to transfer the domain first, don’t worry. All that will happen is that the
transfer won’t be instant, but instead will create a support ticket and one of our Happiness
Engineers will be in touch to help you complete the process.
After transferring the domain, please remind the new owner to update their domain contact
information.

Using WordPress.com through the
Twitter API

If you’re a software developer interested in talking to WordPress.com using the Twitter
protocol–you’ve found the right page. If you’re a user, visit our Twitter API page to learn

how to get real-time access to your blog subscriptions using a Twitter client that supports
WordPress.com.

Twitter is a communication protocol where one can send a message without specifying a
recipient. There are a lot of possibilities for Twitter as a protocol and we’re exploring this at
WordPress.com.

Through the Twitter API, WordPress.com users can:

 Read and receive new post notifications from blogs they’re subscribed to using
the Blog Surfer feature

 Post a “status update” to one of their WordPress.com blogs
On this page you’ll learn which Twitter APIs WordPress.com supports, the WordPress.com
Twitter API conventions, and other resources to look at.

API Basics

The WordPress.com Twitter API supports Basic AUTH. OAuth is not supported at this time.
Users should use their WordPress.com username and password.

Our end-point for the Twitter API is http://twitter-api.wordpress.com. We also support
secure connections at https://twitter-api.wordpress.com

The Twitter API is a RESTful API. Requests are made over HTTP and the response is
returned using the format you specify. The general format of a Twitter API request is:

http://twitter-api.wordpress.com/category/method_call.format

The available categories and methods are shown in the next section. The formats available
are RSS, XML, and JSON. The WordPress.com Twitter API supports each of these.

API Methods

This list of API methods is organized similar to Twitter’s API Documentation. Missing
categories are not implemented on WordPress.com.

Timeline Methods

statuses/friends_timeline
Individual blog posts on WordPress.com are status updates. With this call you will receive
recent posts from the blogs the user is subscribed to.
statuses/home_timeline
Same as statuses/friends_timeline
statuses/user_timeline
Users can request their most recently blog posts using this call.

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Status Methods

statuses/update
This method is similar to its Twitter counterpart. It lets you make a blog post. You may
specify a post with a title using “post title::post body”. If you specify an identifier for a blog,
the post will go there. Otherwise the post goes to the default blog of the authenticated user.

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User Methods

users/show
Shows profile information about the specified blog and returns its latest post.
statuses/friends
Shows which blogs the authenticated user is subscribed to.

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Friendship Methods

friendships/create
Subscribe to a blog
friendships/destroy
Unsubscribe from a blog
friendships/exists
Check whether the current user is following the specified blog or not
friendships/show
Shows the relationship between two users

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Social Graph Methods

friends/ids
Returns the blogs the current user is subscribed to as a list of ids

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Account Methods

account/verify_credentials

Use this method to authenticate a user and test if their credentials are valid (uses BASIC
AUTH)

API Fields

Each of the API methods returns different fields. Here are how these fields map onto
WordPress.com.

description is the tag line description of the blog.

id is a number that identifies a blog.

name is the WordPress.com username of the author of the post.

profile_image_url is a link to the Gravatar of the post author. If no Gravatar is available the
Blavatar for the blog is used instead.

screen_name is the address of the blog without the http://.

text is an excerpt or shortened snippet (up to 140 characters) of the post.

url is the URL of the blog.

Recommended Reading

 Twitter.com: Things every developer should know
 Twitter API Documentation

Webhooks

Webhooks lets you easily develop push notifications. This push notification is simply a
HTTP POST, that is triggered by some action. This is a feature aimed for developers who
want to get data from actions (like when a new comment is submitted) that occur on a blog.
Only admin level users can add or manage webhooks.

The instructions from this guide are referring to the WP Admin dashboard. You can get to
this dashboard by adding /wp-admin to the end of your site’s url (e.g.:
example.wordpress.com/wp-admin)
You can find this feature under Settings -> Webhooks in the dashboard.

Add a Webhook

You can add a webhook by clicking the Add webhook button and filling out a simple form.

You can choose an action and the fields associated with that action to be posted to the URL.
The URL will receive an HTTP POST request when the selected action fires. The post data
will contain the selected fields and one additional field called hook, that contains the action
title.

You can edit, delete and activate or deactivate the webhook using the options in the
webhook row.

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Possible Actions/Fields

Action Description Fields

comment_post Runs just after a comment_ID, comment_agent,
comment is comment_approved,
saved in the comment_author,
database comment_author_IP,

comment_author_email,

publish_page Runs when a comment_author_url,
publish_post page is comment_content, comment_date,

published, or if comment_date_gmt,
it is edited and comment_karma, comment_parent,
comment_post_ID, comment_type,
its status is
“published” user_id

Runs when a ID, comment_count,
post is comment_status, guid, menu_order,

published, or if ping_status, pinged, post_author,
it is edited and post_category, post_content,

its status is post_content_filtered, post_date,
“published” post_date_gmt, post_excerpt,

post_mime_type, post_modified,
post_modified_gmt, post_name,

post_parent, post_password,
post_status, post_title, post_type,

post_url, to_ping

ID, comment_count,
comment_status, guid, menu_order,

ping_status, pinged, post_author,
post_category, post_content,

post_content_filtered, post_date,
post_date_gmt, post_excerpt,

post_mime_type, post_modified,
post_modified_gmt, post_name,

post_parent, post_password,

post_status, post_title, post_type,
post_url, to_ping

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What would I use something like this for?

Let’s look at a hypothetical example; say I want to get a text message every time a new
comment is submitted to my site. First you need to setup a URL that will accept an HTTP
POST request with the comment data and then does all of the heavy lifting of taking that
data and shipping it off to your phone in the form of a text message. Then you add a new
hook via the Webhooks section of the admin area for the ‘comment_post’ action, selecting
which fields you want and the URL that you setup earlier. That’s all there is to it,
WordPress.com will automatically send an HTTP POST with the fields you selected to the
URL you configured for each comment that is submitted. A contrived example to be sure,
but it gives you an idea of what the process looks like.