Using the Athlete WordPress Theme – For Parents With Athletic Children

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 Header for Athletes Theme PostIn this post I am going to assume that you are a parent of an Athletic Child (or two) and you want to set up a website to showcase there experiences.   WordPress blog provide the most flexible and powerful way to do this, so I’m going to show you the basics.   There are literally hundreds of courses and thousands of YouTube videos showing you how to do things in WordPress, so I’m NOT going to give you the whole training.  Let’s get started..

The Two Faces for WordPress

WordPress is a little confusing since there are two different WordPress environments.  

  • WordPress.com – This is a free system.  Your website would be named something like johnsmith.wordpress.com.   While it is free, it is also limited and I’m not going to show you that.
  • WordPress.org – This version of WordPress is called “Open Source.”  The words mean that noone owns the code.  There is a group of volunteers who keep the code up-to-date, release new versions, make enhancements and fix bugs.   There are more consultants who know how to help you with this system than any other platform you could try.   We are going to work with the WordPress.org system

Getting Started with Your Own WordPress Site

While the software you will be running is free, there are some things you need to buy. You will need four things to start your site.   Three of them you can buy yourself, one is a set of add-ons that are free and the last you can easily hire someone to set up for you.

  1.  Domain name – You will need a domain name.   This is the name that people enter into their browsers in order to access your site.   You lease these.   An example would be JohnSmith.com.   You can use a site like GoDaddy.com to find and reserve your domain name.
  2. Hosting Account.   You will need a place on the Internet to store your pictures and all the rest of your website.  This needs to be a company that specializes in having access available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  People cannot access your website on your locel PC.  (Not totally true, but believe me you don’t want the hassle.)
  3. Theme – WordPress provides the basic system.  There are themes that lay on top of the basic system to give you special features.   I’ll be talking about the Athletes theme here since it is designed to showcase athletes.
  4. Installation – Hire someone to do this for you. 
  5. Plugins – There are thousands of things you can add to WordPress to give you special features.  I will recommend a handful here.  Most are free.

Setup – Step 1 – Buy A Domain Name

Log on to GoDaddy.com and search for a domain name that is not taken. (If the .com version of something you want is taken, try the  .US version.  It is only $4 for the first year).   You basically lease your name.  Choose to buy it ofr a year or two.  They will renew automatically if you are still using the site.   Don’t buy any of the other options they offer you.

Setup – Step 2 – Set up an Account with a Hosting Company

Log on to HostGator.com and buy their “Baby” plan.  It is about $12 a year and is a good deal.   Be sure to specify that you don’t want ANY of the addons they offer.

Setup – Step 3 – Buy the Athlete Theme

Logon to https://flexithemes.com/athletes-wordpress-theme/   and purchase the Athletes Theme.  It was $19 when I wrote this.  You will download a file that you will later send to the person your Installs WordPress for you.

Setup – Step 4 – Hire Someone To do the Initial Installation For You.

You can use sites like Upwork.com or Fiverr.com to hire someone to

  1. Install WordPress on Your Hosting Account
  2. Attach your domain name to your hosting account
  3. Install the Atheletes Theme your purchased
  4. Install some basic plugins
  5. Install a tag line and remove the “Just another WordPress Site” line
  6. Create a Contact Us Page with Contact Form 7 Plugin
  7. Create a Main Menu (Mark as “Primary Menu”) add Home, Blog and Contact Us Pages to this menu
  8. Remove Meta Data from Right Side Bar
  9. Create an Admin Account for you with a name that is NOT Admin and with a strong password.  One easy way to create a strong password that is easy to remember is to use the first letter of each word in a sentence that others are unlikely to guess.  For Example John Loves His Gramma Lis Very Much !   would give you this password JLHGLVM!  This ia a “hard to guess password” that is easy for you to remember.

All told this should be $50 or less.  There is a one click install program on HostGator that does the actual installation.   The other steps are just as easy.  The whole process should take an experienced person less than 30 minutes.

This is a one time operation and it is NOT worth you trying to learn and do.

Setup – Step 5 – Install and Remove Plugins.

  1. Remove the MOJO and HostGator Plugins – your don’t need them.
  2. Activate Kismet.  You can and probably should pay the autors a few dollars a year.  There software will reject thousands of phony comments that people have robots trying to make on your site.
  3. JetPack – they will need to create a free account on WordPress.com for you that you will never use except to activate JetPack.  One things JetPack does for you is let you see how many people looked at your site.
  4. Deactivate Hello Dolly,  Hostgator WalkMe and MOJO Marketplace

Installed Plugins

#1 & #2 – Activate

#3, #4, and #5  – Deactivate

Add teh following Apps

  1. Contact Form 7  – use this to create a Contact Us Page  It will look like this
    100-Contact Us
  2. Pinterest “Pin It” Button Lite  – When people hover their mouse over one of you images, a Pinterest PIN IT button appears.  This makes it easy for them to pin your images
  3. TinyMCE Advanced  – improved blog and page editor.
  4. Pretty Link Lite  – You may want to use this later.  It let you create a short link, like mysite.com/camp1   that people can use instead of the actual link to a page or blog post (like mysite.com/first-training-camp-ever-attended).  Part of the advantage is that you can later see how many times the short link was accessed.
  5. Yoast SEO
    Yoast SEO   The Name is the only thing you need to update

Editing Your Website

Your basic install should be complete.   Now it is your turn to update the site.

Logging In  – WordPress sites always have a login URL that looks like this:  YourWebsite.com/wp-admin    or YourSite.us/wp-admin.  
Login Screen
#1 – you enter yourwebsite.com/wp-admin    and it will get expanded to this longer URL
#2 – Tner Your User Name
33 – Enter your Password and press Log-in  (Note:  It will often ask you to answer a simple math problem (like 6 – 3 = ?)  This makes it hard for hackers to attack your site and enter thousands of usernames and passwords tyring to get into your site.)

Customize Your Site

Click on Appearance –> Customaice

Customize Site

#1 – Appearance – when you click on this, it will open up several more menu options

#2 – Click on Customize

98 Site Identity

#1 – Enter a Name for Your Site

#2 – Tenter a Tag Line for Your Site

#3 – Click on Save

You can change the others if you wish.  For example – #1 is where I clicked on a small X and removed something form the right sidebar called “Site Meta Data”

4 - Widgets

#1 – CLick to remove, or add a widget or record the widgets

#2 – Then click on Save

Customize Theme Options

Athletes Theme Options

#1 – Click on Appearance

#2 – Click on Athletes Theme Options

GENERAL

97 - Theme options

#1 – Choose an image header for your site or Text Header for your site.  You can have someone at Fiverr.com create this or create one yourslef at PIXLR.COM.

#2 – This is what the logo looks like

#3- Here is where you upload the logo

#4  Enter the email address you want to use for the contact Form

#5 – (Note Shown)  There is a Save Changes button below – click it.

FEATURED POSTS

This is where you modify the Slider Images on the Main Page.

3 Athletes Theme Options

#1 – Featured Posts

#2 – Note that they want the images to be 460 px x 300 px

#3 – Choose Custom Slides

SAVE WHAT YOU HAVE ENTERED with the Save Changes Button at the bottom of the page

Before we can Edit these we need to go to another section and upload the images we will use.  This theme does not have an “Upload Image” button here.

Step 1 – Pick the Images You want to Use

Step 2 – Resize the images to 460 pixels by 300 pixels (You can use PIXLR.COM or any number of editors to do this.)

Step 3 – Upload the Images to your website

Click on Media –> Library in the menu on the left side

Media Library

#1 – Meida

#2 – Library

Media Library

Click on Add New

2015-12-30_23h19_08

Add New

There are two ways to upload images

#1 – You can open a Windows Explorer and highlight several images.  Hold the mouse button down and drag them into this window.

#2 – You can click this buttonyou will see an Exploer type windoow, browse to the file you want, highlight it and click the Open Button you will see in the Explorer type window.

Step 4 – Get Image URLs

Once you have uploaded the images, you will see them in your Image Library

Images in Media Library

Click on one of the images

You will see the Image details – including the URL you can use to view just this image.

get Image URL

#1 – Copy this URL and save it into a NotePad or Document

#2 – CLick on the X

Repeat this for all five images.

Go Back to Appearance  –>  Atheletes Theme Options –> Featured Posts

Now we are going to click on the Edit Button for Image 1.

3 Athletes Theme Options

#5 Click on Edit Button

Edit Featured Image

#1 – Paste the URL for your First Image here

#2 – Give the Image a short Title

#3 – Enter a short paragraph that describes the situation or image

REPEAT FOR ALL THE IMAGES

Save Changes

SOCIAL PROFILES

You can edit this if you want to connect your Website to Facebbok pages or Twitter accounts.

SET INITIAL CATEGORIES

We have one more step to finish the inital setup of your web site.

You can create categories and attach each post you write to one or more of the categories.  For example you might create a Category called “State Championship 2015”  Everything you write that is associated with the State Championship should be included in this category.

We currently have the categories set so that they display on the right side of every page.  A visitor could click on one of the categories and see a list of all your posts for one of the categories.

Create Initial Categories

Categories

Click on Posts –> Categories

add a Cateogry

Enter a name for the category.

On the right is a list of existing categories

Out of sight is a place to enter a paragraph about the Category and a Save button

SETUP IS COMPLETE

Now you add new posts

Adding Posts (Articles)

This is where most of the day to day activity takes place.   You will write blog posts that are in fact articles with images.  Note that this is an HTML editor and works a little differently than word processing editors you are use to.   In particular adding a new line by pressing the Enter key has very little effect.  HTML is designed to show paragraphs differently on different monitors or mobile devices.   You might have 5 words per line on a smart phone and 30 words per line on a large monitor.  HTML re-formats the lines on the fly to fit the hardware.

Let’s look at the editor and the process.

20-Add Posts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#1 – Click on Posts

#2 – Click  on Add New Posts  (If you click on All Posts you will see a list off all your posts and you can edit an existing post or edit on a post that is in Draft mode)

#3 – Give a Title to your post

#4 – The URL to get to just this post will be your website / each-word-of-your-title-with-dashes-between-each-word.   You can edit this, you will always end up with a lower case name with no spaces.

#5 – This drop down indicates the size of the font.  You can highlight a word, line or paragraph can change the font size at any time.

#6 – This headline is being shown as a Header 2 font size.

#7 – This is an uploaded image

#8 – There are two modes here.  The Visual Mode is a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get mode and the Text mode shows you the raw HTML.  Fortuneately, you won’t need Text mode very often.

You can see that there are icons that look like a standard Word Processor.  You can Bold words or lines, Center Lines or IMages, etc.

Entering Images

For most of you articles, the images are boing to be a very important part of the posts.

Top Line Image – you usually want a small image at the top of each article, on the left or the right.  Let’s start with that.

21 - top image

 

 

 

 

 

 

#1 – Enter a few lines of text and then click the cursor on the top line at the very front of the line.

#2 – Click on the Upload Files Button

You will see thumbnails of all the images you already have uploaded.  You can click on one of those OR click on the Upload Media Button

NOTE:  These images are blurred on pupose.

22 - add top image

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#1 and #2 – Example image you could use that are already uploaded.

#3 – Upload Files – go and upload new images

Now you will see a screen that lets you pick the files you want to upload

24 - Add Files

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You have two ways to pick files

#1 – Open a Windows Explorer –> HIghlight one or more images –> drag the image onto this screen.  They will all upload at once.

#2 – Click the Select Files Button and a Windows Explorer screen will open an dlet your pick the files you want

24 - Top Image

 

 

 

 

 

Here I have chosen the “Select Files” Button

 #1 – Highlight the file you want

#2 – Click the Open button

Now will will go back to the list of available images.  The one or more you just chose will now be in the list.  (Now the one with a check mark is the one you will insert.  Click on an image to add or remove the check mark.)  If you upload several images, they will all be checked.

 25 - top image

 

 

#1 – Here is the check Marked Image

#2 – Over on the right we have information about the image – It is nice to add a description in the “Alt Text” field.  This is what the blind readers will speak to blind people describing the image.

#3 – There are four settings you can choose from here.  A) None – image float B) Right – the image is on the right and text fill be beside the image on the left  C) Left – the image will be on the left and there will be text to the right of the image and D) Center – the image will be centered and there will be no text on the left or the right of the image.

#4 – CLick this button to insert the image into your post.

Now we can click on the image and resize it be dragging the little circles in the corners.

26 = top image

 

#1 – Resize

#2 – Center or set to left or right

#3 – Edit the Alt Text or Caption

#4 – Delete

Other Images  – You add other images in exactly the same way.  The only difference will be that you will usually want then centered.

Saving Your Work

In the right margin beside the text you are entering there are a few options.

27 - saving work

 

 

 

#1  – Choose the Cateogry you want this post to belong to.  You may have to save you work and go create a new category.

#2 – Save Draft – This will save you work, but no=one can see it.

#3 – Publish – Click this when you are ready for this post to be see by visitors to your site.

View Your Post

 

30 view post

 

VIEW POST

After you have saved the draft or published the post, you can see what it really looks like by clicking on View Post

31 - Edit post

 

 

 

If you don’t like what you see there is an Edit button at the top of the screen

CATEGORIES

If a visitor click on one of your Categories – they will see a list of all the Posts associated with that category

32 - Categories

 

#1 – Here

 

 

#1 – Here I click on the LAX Camp 2014

#2 and #3 were shown – There are the two sample articles I wrote about his camp.

MORE

There are many other things that can be done, but this will get you started.

 

Until Next time, you have a Great Day!  Oh Hale Yes!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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About Hale Pringle

Dr. Hale is an Internet Entrepreneur and Network
Marketing expert. His greatest pleasure is
helping people and he does just that, drawing
upon the immense resources that he has gathered
over the years in his unquenchable thirst for
knowledge.

Dr. Hale lives in beautiful, sunny Florida with
his wife, two dogs and a cat. His four children
are grown and are scattered around the state.

An eternal optimist you will hear him say
regularly: “Is this a Great Day?” The answer is
always, “Hale Yes!”

If you need help with your online marketing or a
network marketing opportunity Dr. Hale is the go
to man. “Hale Yes!”

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