How to use the community | WordPress.com Courses

Exciting news!

All of our course materials have been moved to: https://wordpress.com/learn/ where you can freely access all courses, no registration or login is required.

We are no longer accepting new registrations through this site, and no further updates will apply to the course materials here in WP Courses. Please visit the new site for access to the materials.

We are also no longer using this WP Courses Community. All community activity should now take place in the new Education Community Forum. The new forum can be viewed by anyone, but you’ll need to login to your WordPress.com account to post new threads or reply to existing ones.

Welcome to the WPCourses Community, we are happy you are here!

Contained within are guides and resources designed to help you get the most out of your time here.

Table of Contents

Etiquette
Expectations
Profile
Hashtags
Markdown
Pinned
Feeback
FAQs

Etiquette

General best practices for posting in communities

Be kind. Everyone here is working on bettering themselves by putting their thoughts out in public. Words can hurt, choose your posts and replies carefully.
Be supportive. Lend a hand! If you see someone struggling, try to help them out. A helpful word can go a long way when someone is feeling down.
Include links, but have a purpose – this community isn’t a marketplace, it’s not about promoting yourself here to grow your audience – when you ask for feedback, we need a link, that works, that we can look at. Don’t drop a link and ask for followers, it likely won’t work anyway.
Please read and follow our Code of Conduct.

Expectations

Please understand that staff members are not able to respond to every post. If you need specific help, and have not received a reply in the community, you can send an email to courses@wordpress.com.

Profile

An account with login is created when signing up for any of our courses.

Please note that your login credentials for WP Courses is not connected to your WordPress.com account credentials.

Once logged in, you can find your profile here: https://wpcourses.com/profile/ or by going here: https://wpcourses.com/community-activity/ and clicking your profile image or name.

While viewing your profile, you can create a post under Stream. Or under the About tab, add your personal information. Also check Preferences, Notifications and Account for additional settings.

What are these options? (stream, about, preferences, notifications, follow)

Stream: public posts in descending order, newest first. (From your own profile page, the Stream tab will just include the posts that you have published.)
About: where to edit your profile information.
Followers: list of your current followers and those you are following.
Preferences: settings for timezone, show/block your birthday year, profile publicity settings, who can post on your profile. Etc.
Notifications: set your preference for receiving notifications. All, none, daily digest, mentions, profile likes, etc. (This is where you turn off email notifications if desired.)
Account: change your password. Export your community data.

Hashtags

Use hashtags in your posts to make it easier to find topics (Note: hashtags in comments aren’t indexed)

Hashtags can be used to find specific posts of interest. If you look at the upper left corner of the Community page, you will see the most used hashtags currently being used. Pick one from the list, or add your own. To see all of the posts for that particular hashtag, just click on one!

How to search for hashtags

To search for words in posts, or even for hashtags, use the “#” field at the top of the post feed. Type in the exact word or phrase.

Markdown

When creating a post, there are shortcuts that can be used to style your text. These shortcuts are called Markdown.

Example: # Heading will create a Heading in H1 size.

Look at the image below. The left side shows the text in a new post window. The right side shows how the post will look. Drag the center slider to the left or right to view each side.

This feature is using the Image Compare block

Click here to see Markdown styles you can copy-paste and then edit.

# Heading 1
## Heading 2
### Heading 3

Use double asterisks to make text bold like this:
**This text would be bold**

Use single asterisks to make text italics likes this:
*This text would be italicized*

To add an image use the following and replace URL with the full URL of the image you want to insert. All characters from ! to ) are required for this to work.
![Image](URL "add alt text here")

To make words a link use this and replace URL with the link URL. Again, all characters are needed.
[Type your text here](URL)

Daily pinned posts

Regularly scheduled posts may be “pinned” to the top of the feed. This is to give the community a chance to see it, and follow up. The main idea for these posts are for them to act as prompts for you, and to provide updates.

Feedback

Anecdotal story about feedback

Have you ever asked a professional for an opinion only to find that the opinion differs greatly from that of a regular bystander?

For example, the feedback you get from an editor on a story is often vastly different from the feedback you get from an average reader.

Or say the professional opinion of a horticulturalist versus the opinion of your neighbor on your garden arrangement.

It’s because of subjectivity vs. objectivity and a healthy dose of information bias.

Someone who is trained professionally in something is often going to have a much different perspective of their subject matter than someone who simply enjoys or appreciates the outcome.

Websites are no different. There are without question “professionals” who know a great deal about the technicalities of websites and about the design aspects, and those opinions can be extremely valuable when creating your website. But they’re not the only opinions that matter. Because, it’s highly likely that those professionals are not experts in your niche and they don’t know your audience.

It’s even possible that a “professional” opinion could turn off your audience.

A website is a form of art in many ways. It’s an expression of you, your brand, your content, your niche. Sure a fashion designer might be world famous, but that doesn’t mean their clothes would suit me, or you, personally.

So don’t get too hung up on the opinions of “professionals” when it comes to your website. That includes all of us WordPress experts. We can offer ideas and suggestions, and they might be well grounded in reasoning, logic (and a healthy dose of personal opinion/preference), but at the end of the day you’re the one looking at and working with your site daily, so you need to love it, not us.

So getting feedback and opinions from absolutely anyone will have value, because it will open you up to many different perspectives. The same goes for giving feedback, your opinion matters, you don’t need to be a proclaimed expert to have an opinion of what you like and don’t like.

Besides, if every website was built the way a small handful of people think they should look, how utterly boring would the internet become!

FAQs & How-to’s

Searching

When searching for community posts or hashtags, click the search icon at the top right of the post feed.

Tagging Others

When responding to other users in the same post, reply with “@” and their username. The other user will be notified of the reply, as long as their settings are configured for notification.
Note: If the user is not in the conversation thread, they will not be notified of a new reply.

Filtering Posts

When viewing community posts, the view can be filtered to find various community posts, your posts, or posts from people you are following.

At the top of the post feed are three buttons. Community, Show my posts, and New posts. Each button has multiple options.

Community – all posts from entire community.

Following – only members and posts you follow.

Saved Posts – posts added to your “Saved” list.