WordPress Basic Training, Posts, Categories and Tags:

Many people also get category affliction and create categories for every little thing under the sun. This is wrong. It’s not good from a usability perspective and it’s wrong from an SEO perspective. Categories should stay relatively broad. You can and should distinguish characteristics of a posts within a similar category through the use of tags.  

A good litmus test for this is to ask yourself just how many articles you might have in a category. If you find that you’ll have very few articles in a category then it’s possible that the subject is not worthy of being categorized.  For example a single category of Choreography is good enough to cover Choreography for beginning dancers, intermediate and then advanced where the differences are distinguished by tags.

If you have any questions, or comments about this video, leave them in the comments below.

WordPress Basic Training, Getting Started and the WordPress Dashboard

You’ll get an overview of the WordPress Dashboard which is where all your administrative functions are located and where you’ll spend a bulk of your time as you create your site and content as well as manage comments, select themes and access the basic settings of your blog.

If you’re new to WordPress we highly suggest that you follow along with the training videos and resist the urge to jump ahead. The objective of the training series is not only to help you get your feet wet and familiar with WordPress Web Publishing, but to also show you how you should be putting your site together so that you get quickly indexed by Google and you get the highest possible rankings.

The PDF guide has been provided so you can go as fast, or slow and move through the training at your own pace.

If you have any questions, or comments about this video please leave them below as a comment and I’ll reply within 24 hours or less.

WordPress Basic Training, Getting Started Video

Configuring Kunaki for Customer Ordering

Once you have your DVD uploaded to Kunaki, you’ll need to log in to your Kunaki account and then set some properties for your Kunaki account and for each DVD (like the price) so that you can offer it to your prospects with the resulting money going into your bank account.
If you have any questions or comments leave them below and someone will reply in 24 hours or less.

Having worked as a journalist for a major metropolitan newspaper for 23 years, I waded through my share of press releases — good, bad and horrible.

Before I get into the fine points of crafting a press release, there are probably a few things you ought to know about the news business.

Reporters and editors in the traditional media get dozens, sometimes hundreds of press releases in a week. About five percent of those may get serious attention for consideration as a story or news blurb. About one percent may ever get written up.

Reporters are no more or less industrious than anyone else. If there’s an easier way to do something, they’ll probably do it. So your job is to make their job as easy as possible. In effect, you need to tell them what the story is and give them everything they need to write it.

Their attitude is typically “we’re doing you a favor by telling your story.” At the same time, because they receive so much crap, they are pleasantly surprised and appreciative when they receive an interesting and well-written press release.

Now the expectations are somewhat less for online PR services. They’ll take anything and post it and someone might read it. But the same basic principles will still apply. You have to present an appealing story for it to have any legs and for others to want to pick up that story.

As someone deciding whether a story is worth the space, here’s what I want to see.

Is there and interesting and newsworthy angle? Just because your Aunt Millie played a bit part in your zombie movie is not cause for a press release, unless Aunt Millie is Milla Jovovich. Think about what is really interesting about your movie, then run that by a few people and see what they say. Maybe it’s a tale of overcoming great obstacles to make the movie, or the unique plot, or the fact you were a pipe-fitter before you became a director.

If your first approach is to the local newspaper, you might want to emphasize any local connection, from the writer/director, to locations, to actors.

Some reasons for issuing a press release:

1) the movie is about to premiere in theatrical or online release

2) it’s been accepted into a film festival, Sundance we hope

3) you’ve got a star whose name will be recognized

4) a local connection

But the basic question to ask yourself is, why would anyone care? If you can’t find a good answer to that, don’t even start the press release.

This is the lead of your press release. It might be all they read, so do it well.

Secondly, it’s not nice to tease the reporters. Your press release should have all the information they need to complete a story, or at worst, contact information so they can find it. They are usually on deadline and the fewer rabbit holes they have to go down, the better.

This means a clear statement of the five Ws somewhere in the press release, perhaps as a sub-headline — the who, what, when, where and, why (or how) if necessary. “Attack of the KIller Wombats,” starring Bat Masterson, premieres Thursday, Aug. 19, 2012 at the Indie Cinema, 2025 W. 98th Street, Poleaxe, North Dakota.”

Include a concise description of your movie, in the second or third graph, which can be expanded upon later. But you should have a great logline by the time your movie is released. Use it.

Include links to your movie trailer online and your movie webpage which will be filled with interesting information about the production and distribution of the film — right?

At the end of your press release, include your contact information including phone number and email. Also include the names and contact information of the anyone else you’d like to do an interview, including the writer, director, producer or lead actors. Phone numbers are preferred. Make sure you note that this contact information is for the use of the writer only and not to be reprinted anywhere.

Spell check, dammit. Bad writing is one thing. Bad spelling is preventable.

Mention your movie website in the press release.

If you’re specifically targeting a movie reviewer, let them know the movie is available on your Maxcast account. That helps you by giving them instant access, and prevents their 12-year-old son from burning a copy and bootlegging it in China.

(You might want to wait for the review, however. Your goal here is to get the good word out about the movie before it premieres. If it’s good and a reviewer says so, great. But a bad review before the premiere can kill the interest.)

Include movie stills if you’re sending a hard copy press kit, or make digital photos of at least 300 DPI available from your website. The resolution can be less for online reproduction. Editors love photos they don’t have to assign, and your story could get you placement over an equally compelling story that has no artwork. (For TV, it’s a little different ball game. They want visuals to go with the story, so be prepared to give them something visual if they should call. You’re a visual artist. Think like one.)

Have someone who doesn’t know a thing about your movie read the press release before you send it off. We tend to take things for granted that we are familiar with and can easily forget to provide basic information.

Do some targeting of the reporters. Find out who covers movies for that particular daily newspaper, alternative weekly, TV station, website or blog and make sure they and their boss get a copy of the press release.

Actually, to prime the pump, you might call before you send the press release. Contact the target by phone if possibly, and Innocently inquire about whether they are the right person to send the press release to. Don’t sell it, just plant the seed. If the reporter is bored, he or she might even chat you up to find out more information.

The sweet spot for press releases for traditional media is 2-4 weeks prior to publication. This gives them time to do a story, but it’s not so long that they forget about it. Online releases are instantaneous, but still give them a couple of weeks notice before something like a premiere.

You may follow up 3-5 working days later with a phone call or email to the reporter or editor to see if they received the press release and if there is any other information they need. Be prepared to do an interview at any time. Then cross your fingers.

Download Sample Press Release

Download  Sample Press Release MS Word for Windows (use for template)

Word Press 3.0 introduced the concept of custom menus. Custom menus can provide you with a very explicit way to control what links can be clicked and where they can be found. It gives you a very precise way or organizing the content on your site in just the way you want and that serves your users best.

Custom menus not only can control what is seen on the top of your site but you can create an unlimited number menus and use them in your sidebars as well.

This short video provides an overview of custom menus, their function and their configuration.<!–more–>
The video uses the Filmmakers Channel, Channel Theme but the concepts are generally transferrable to any of our themes or Word Press 3.0 compatible and above themes. If you have feedback, or any questions about custom menus, or this video please a comment below.

WordPerss Basic Training, Adding Hyperlinks to Y our Post or Page: For many who are new to Word Press, the simple things such as hyper-linking can be confusing. Especially if their background is with an HTML editor such as Front Page, or Dream Weaver. Hyper-linking in Word Press is actually pretty easy and has been made easier with a recent release of WordPerss that allows you to browse your blogs, pages or posts. This short video will teach you how to add a hyper-link to your page or post using the permalink, or the short code. If you have any questions about hyperlinking in Word Press just leave a comment below if you have any questions about this video.

How To Add A Photo Gallery To Your Word Press Posts

This video walks you through the two different ways for attaching images to posts and then how to insert the image gallery into your post. This short video will demonstrate exactly how to use the built in capability in Word Press to add as many photos as you want and when you hook up the Word Press Photo Gallery with the Light Box plug in you can create a really nice experience for your users.

One other tip to help you create a great user experience is to size your pictures properly before adding them to your post.

If you have any questions about this video, please feel free to leave a comment below.

YouTube Alternative for Making Your Private: Sometimes there’s a need for a YouTube alternative, such as when you want to make your video totally private. YouTube recently has enabled some amount of privacy where you can restrict viewing of a video to people by email. This is certainly a step forward for YouTube but if you use this approach you will not be able to embed the video in a webpage. So, the question is what to do if you don’t want your video to be public but at the same time you want to make it available to people visiting on your website.

YouTube Alternative, Viddler

There is another great free video hosting and sharing service called Viddler and with a small ‘hack’ you can upload a video to Viddler, make it completely private and still be able to add the embed code to a webpage for broadcasting purposes. The natural question is why you might want to keep your video private but still put it on your website?

There are many reasons that come to mind. Here’s a few;

1. The fist reason of course is that you don’t want people publicly your cool video with lots of good content and then not come to your website.
2. You want to make the video available only to subscribers.
3. You don’t want to spend the money on a premium video storage and sharing service.

YouTube is not the only game in town so keep Viddler in mind when you’re looking for a YouTube alternative that will allow you to shield it from prying public eyes but still make it available t o your website visitors. This short video provided by the “Filmmakers Nation” will walk you through a small hack and by the end you’ll know how to upload video to Viddler, make a couple of changes to the embed code and then presto, your video is now can be embedded on your site but not available to the public.

I should probably stop here but as a former corporate trainer we had to think in terms of systems of content delivery because everyone learns differently. So have a strategy about how you’re going to address students learning needs both short and long term and how you might integrate video with other forms of content.

That’s all I got for now.

Dan