One of the most frequently asked questions about using WordPress for managing a website is: How do I disable the comments on a page or post? While the comment system in WordPress works really well and can be a great way to get feedback, there are many instances when comments from site visitors are not necessary or appropriate. By default, the option for a site visitor to leave a comment is on. It is not obvious how to turn comments off when creating or editing a page because the option is initially hidden. The following short video shows how to disable comments on a page or post and how to change the...

Managing navigation menus on a website is usually a difficult task. WordPress takes way most of the difficulty of creating menus and, some would say, even makes it fun. In fact, on many WordPress sites the menu will automatically be configured as you create each new page. Page settings such as the ‘Parent Page’ and ‘Order’ allow you to control where in the menu the page will be listed. There are, however, many cases where the menu needs to be customized. For example, if you need to add a link to a third-party webpage or add a post category. The following video, part of the...

If you intend to use WordPress  as more than just a blog, and in my opinion you should at least consider it, it is necessary to understand how to create pages. While there are many similarities between creating a post and a page, there are some significant differences. The following video gives an overview of creating a page and the various options available: For more video tutorials on how to use WordPress check out the How-To page at the Palomar College WordPress Central site.   Share...

I had the opportunity today to offer a Professional Development workshop on capturing and producing screen video from Camtasia, the remarkable screen video program from Techsmith.com.  The normal Camtasia workflow is Record > Edit > Produce, with most of the work occurring during the edit phase.  Last semester I did a workshop on Editing in Camtasia, and the attendees asked for another in Capturing (the Record) and Publishing (the Produce phase), so that is what I did today.  I could not help but notice that the people at that last semester workshop were not present.  However, lots of other...

When I intend to capture a full-screen video using Camtasia, I usually do three things to prepare my Windows 7 desktop: Set an appropriate screen resolution; Set the desktop background to a solid color; Set the Windows taskbar to auto-hide. First, I record in widescreen aspect ratio (16:9) since that is the standard used by YouTube, my production destination of choice.  It is also the standard for most of the computers on our campus.  Therefore I set my screen resolution to 1280 x 720, what they call 720p video.  In older versions of Camtasia, and on slower systems I have seen Camtasia throw an error...