If you’ve been wanting to learn about branding, Karissa Skirmont can help with that. Her talk at WordCamp St. Louis is How to Brand your WordPress Website. Here’s a little about her journey with WordPress.
Interview with Karissa Skirmont
Karissa shares a video of driving in this area. She says: “Have you ever been off-roading in a Chrysler 300? I have and it got kinda scary. Was trying to get to Nederland the ‘scenic’ way up Four Mile Canyon but the paved road turned in to gravel then dirt, then dead-end into Switzerland Trail. Didn’t want to turn around for the miles that I had just driven. So I kept going.”
“It was rough. I only scrapped bottom twice, as I went so slow and careful. Growing up in Colorado my parents had a Land cruiser so I must have got some skill by osmosis. Finally came out at the top where a bunch of ATVers had gathered. Talk about a shocked group of guys. They asked me if I was lost as they had never seen that nice of a car in the middle of nowhere. Needless to say I’m not going to try that again.“
NILE FLORES: When did you start using WordPress?
KARISSA SKIRMONT: Haa, bet I’m going to have the most detailed answer. Last year I went through my vast email archives to figure out the exact dates when I started using WordPress, but for the most part it was 2010 when I started using it regularly.
4/27/2007 – Creation date for my WordPress.com account
7/8/2007 – First client WordPress.com site (My mother’s blog)
1/28/2009 – First WordPress.org site (WP 3.0.3)
10/2/2010 – Created WordPress.org account
3/7/2011 – First email from GoDaddy about Multisite after I asked a question
8/25/2011 – First Multisite install created
9/12/2011 – First started using Genesis Framework
NILE FLORES: What are a few takeaways that attendees will get from your talk?
KARISSA SKIRMONT: They will have clarity about what areas they can customize to personalize a WordPress theme to better reflect their brand. If they are DIY, little changes can make a big difference to make a premade theme to not seem so generic. Or if they are working with a designer, these are the areas that they will need to figure out to provide them. I also will include lots of links for more resources for each area I cover.
NILE FLORES: WordPress is turning 15 years old. What would you like to see in the future for WordPress?
KARISSA SKIRMONT: Better organization for media. I wish the core had the capabilities to file media in folders. Like an image folder for the DESIGN of the site, image folder for BLOG POST images and a folder that automatically hides content from Google.
NILE FLORES: “And just for funsies”, over the past few years, the WordPress community has seen the rise of the cute Wapuu character? Heard of it? And if so, what’s your favorite Wapuu? (Wapuu Reference: https://wapu.us/ )
KARISSA SKIRMONT: Yes, I’ve designed a several myself including 5 over the years for WordCampKC.
My favorite actually hasn’t been published yet. In 2015 I designed a “Harry Potter Cosplay Wapuu” catching the snitch while riding a broom with a scarf, scar and round glasses.
I’ll be submitting them all soon to wapu.us.
NILE FLORES: What is your favorite area of the WordPress admin?
KARISSA SKIRMONT: The Network Plugin page of a WordPress Multisite network. I love having one place for all my plugins across my own multiple personal/biz websites. It makes it easy to remember which ones I use for different cases. I also use the plugins “Network Plugin Auditor” and “Plugins Last Updated Column” to enhance it even more.
NILE FLORES: What are the top three WordPress plugins that you believe every WordPress user should have installed?
KARISSA SKIRMONT: Really, only three?! Beyond the general ones that everyone uses, I really love adding more functionality to the admin area.
1. Enable Media Replace – https://wordpress.org/plugins/enable-media-replace/
Enable replacing media files by uploading a new file in the “Edit Media” section of the WordPress Media Library.
(A must have so that I don’t have to keep deleting and re-uploading media revisions to keep the same URL path.)
2. Admin Post Navigation – https://wordpress.org/plugins/admin-post-navigation/
Adds links to navigate to the next and previous posts when editing a post in the WordPress admin. (This is very important when I’m doing mass changes to multiple pages/posts like in online courses.)
3. Simple Page Ordering – https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-page-ordering
Order your pages and hierarchical post types using drag and drop on the built in page list.
(I like to keep my pages in the order that I have them in the menu. I also separate out front end pages from hidden backend pages.
Want to learn more about branding? Come see Karissa’s talk at WordCamp St. Louis, May 12 and 13, 2018. You can buy a ticket here.