Task: Create a site icon for your WordPress.
Points: 3
Customized site icons — commonly called favicons — are a simple, subtle way to make your WordPress blog more unique or branded. These tiny images are essentially logos that show up in your bookmarks or tabs. I’ve gotten so accustomed to them, that whenever possible I delete the text associated with them in bookmarks bar and all of my course sites have them (see below).
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Task: Make a custom banner/header for your WordPress site
Points: 5
Banners (aka header images or headers) are usually the first thing readers see when your site loads. They’re often at the very top of the page, and make a quick impression.
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Task: Add a widget (or several) to your WordPress site.
Points: 3-5/each
Widgets are little sidebars or blocks that enhance your site, making it more dynamic and customized. I have 3 widgets on my homepage of this course site: the Mac OS shortcuts image, a tag cloud, and the Twitter feed from @PolitiFact.
[Update: I now have 4 widgets — I added the Quarantine Party playlist from Spotify after helping the morning class troubleshoot how to do it. If you want to learn how to embed a playlist, head over to this page.]
But there are dozens more possibilities. You can add as many widgets to your site as you want (keeping in mind that the maximum amount of points you can receive from WordPress enhancements in this unit is 25).
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Task: Register a custom domain name, redirect it to your current WordPress site, and email me the new link.
Points: 5
It might seem like a minor thing, but entrepreneurial authors argue that owning a slice of the web through a custom web address has become increasingly necessary for writers who self-publish and self-promote their work. The good news is that registering a domain is easier than you might think.
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Task: Perfect your “About Me” page into a 300-word introduction to yourself and your site and make sure it appears on your menu.
Points: 5
This is mostly a re-post from Unit 1, but since some of you did not produce an ideal or exemplary “About Me” page, here is another opportunity to craft or revise it.
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