Assignment 2 Reflection

I just finished feeling my way around WordPress. The one question I still have is this: what exactly does installing WordPress mean? Would we all be able to mess with plugins and themes if we were to install it?

I started out by skimming through other teams pages, reading through the discussion board postings and the help pages, and seeing what my team had already done. I commented on some of my team member's posts. From here, I studied the dashboard, looking at all of my options. I made my profile in my account setup, then I added a page for my actual bio page. I saw that others had pictures, so I added a self-portrait, my portfolio website, and my individual blog. It was all pretty easy to catch on to, but the site was very slow (not sure if that was my connection's fault). 

I created a post, and then I changed the theme, adding or subtracting widgets. I liked having the sidebar to the left, so I moved that. I was a little confused on the themes though, I wasn't sure how to add a new theme, (one of my team members did, but I wasn't as successful) so I just added one already listed. I did try to install a new theme, but it wasn't successful.

I then created another post, linking to a video (I did not figure out to embed it) and posting a captioned image. I noticed that the image was automatically added to the media library. 


I played with tags a little bit, adding a tag cloud to our sidebar. If we had more time, I think that this feature would prove to be useful (and fun) in the long run. The categories were nice, too. I didn't add any, but I did label each of my posts according to the ones that had already been created.

Overall, I felt like I learned pretty quickly, but only because I had so many examples to look at. The Dashboard feature is really nice, I'd like to learn more about WordPress in the future, starting from scratch. I felt like a lot was done for us, and maybe that was what created a gap in understanding a few things. I also wish I had started earlier, but time was not on my side this week.

Time to find a librarian to interview!