WordPress In Depth Book

Introduction

Welcome

Why This Book?

How Our Book Is Organized

Conventions Used in This Book

Text Conventions

Special Elements

Part I: Getting Started with Your Blog

1 Getting Started with WordPress

What Is WordPress?

WordPress Versions in Brief

The WordPress Community

What Does It Cost You?

Who Is WordPress For?

Blogger as a Worthy Alternative

WordPress User Case Study 1: Beginners

WordPress User Case Study 2: A Business Blog

WordPress Hosting Options

Making the Move

Comparing WordPress.com with WordPress Software

Other Ways to Create an Online Presence

2 Starting Your Blog Right

Creating Your Blog

How Many Visitors Do You Want?

Playing the Domain Name Game

Starting with a Custom Domain Name

Adding a Custom Domain Name Later

Using a WordPress.com Domain Name Forever

Signing Up

Creating a WordPress Account and a Blog

Taking Advantage of Resources

Changing Initial WordPress Settings

General Settings

Writing Settings

Reading Settings

Discussion Settings

Media Settings

Privacy Settings

Sharing Settings

Other Settings Subpanels: OpenID, Text Messaging, Domains, Email, and

Webhooks

WordPress Settings Not in the Settings Menu

Ratings Settings

Post by Email and Post by Voice Settings

Delete Site

3 Creating Your Blog’s Look

You’ve Got the Look

Introducing Themes

What to Look for in a Theme

Colors

Number of Columns

Fixed-Width or Flexible-Width Columns

Widgets and Other Features

Should You Change Your Theme with CSS?

Listing the Themes

Choosing a Theme

Changing a Custom Header

Changing mShots and Related Links

Adding Available Widgets

Placing Widgets

Preserving Existing Widgets

Adding New Widgets

A Brief Catalog of Widgets

Getting the Most Out of Widgets

Part II: Running Your Blog

4 Creating Your First Post

What Is a Blog Entry?

Using the QuickPress Tool

Adding a New Post

Working on Posts in Full-Screen Mode

Using Basic Formatting Commands

An Example of Text Formatting

Using Hyperlinks as Formatting

Using Secondary Formatting Commands

Adding Links

Linking Strategy

Creating a Link

Using Shortlinks

Using bit.ly

Using the Get Shortlink Feature

Saving, Checking Your Spelling, and Publishing Posts

5 Taking Posts Further

Doing More with Posts

Anchor Posts

Putting Your Posts in Categories

How People Think About Categories

Using and Creating Categories

Managing Categories

Moving Posts Among Categories

Tagging Your Posts

Using and Creating Tags

Managing Tags

Changing Tags Associated with Posts

Updating Links and Your Blogroll

Adding New Links

Editing Links

Link Categories

6 Using HTML in Your Widgets and Blog

How HTML Can Take You Further

Power Tools for Better Blogging

HTML Basics in WordPress

HTML Tags

The Visual and HTML Tabs

Character Formatting

List Formatting

Linking

The More Tag

HTML Editing in WordPress

What Tags Can I Use?

YouTube as an Example of Embedded HTML

Using the Text Widget

Content Providers for the Text Widget

Things You Can Do with the Text Widget

A Simple Sample Text Widget

7 Adding Features to Your Blog

Making Your Blog Better

Adding Users to Your Blog

Understanding WordPress User Roles

Inviting Users and Assigning Roles

Adding a Static Page

Planning Static Pages

Designing a Static Page

Creating and Editing Static Pages

Adding a Custom Menu

Planning Menus

Creating a Custom Menu

Adding Polls

8 Tracking Statistics and Bringing In Visitors

Getting More People to Visit Your Blog

WordPress Statistics

Why Are You Doing This?

Stats on Your WordPress Administration Page

The Stats Page in WordPress Administration

Analyzing Referrers

Incoming Links

Looking at Search Terms

Top Posts and Pages

Clicks

Blog Stats: Summary Tables

How Visitors Can Subscribe to Your Blog

Using the RSS Widget

Part III: Taking Your Blog Further

9 Adding Graphics to Your Blog and Posts

Why Add Graphics and Other Media?

Copyright and Media Types

Putting Pictures in Your Posts

Graphics Tips for Bloggers

Using the WordPress Image Editor

How Much Should I Scale and Crop?

When Should I Use a Separate Editor?

Uploading and Inserting Graphics

Uploading an Image to the Media Library

Using an Image from Your Computer in Your Post

Using an Image from the Media Library in Your Post

Using an Image from the Web in Your Post

Using a Custom Header Image Per Post

10 Adding Upgrades, Audio, and Video

Upgrading Your Blog

A Quick Description of Upgrades

Custom CSS

Unlimited Private Users

No-ads Upgrade

Space/Audio Upgrades: 5GB, 15GB, and 25GB

VideoPress Upgrade

Domain Names

Global Differences

Getting a Good Domain Name

WordPress.com

Domain Names Versus

Custom Domain Names

How Domain Names Work

Choosing a Good Third-Level or Second-Level Domain Name

Using Audio in Your Blog

Where to Host Audio

Putting an Audio File in Your Blog

Using Video in Your Blog

Where to Host Video

Putting a Video File in Your Blog

Part IV: Building Your Own WordPress Installation

11 Installing and Upgrading WordPress Software

Getting It Done for You: Hosted WordPress

Finding a Blog-Friendly Host

Why PHP and MySQL?

Using FTP to Upload Files

Preparing for the Five-Minute Hosted WordPress Installation

The Five-Minute Hosted WordPress Installation

Adding a User to Your Site

Upgrading WordPress

Transferring Your WordPress.com Blog

Hosting WordPress Yourself

Installing a Test Web Server and MySQL Database

Editing the WordPress Configuration File

12 Taking Control of Your WordPress Site

A Quick Tour of the WordPress.org Dashboard

Customizing Your Dashboard

Getting Social: WordPress Multisite and BuddyPress

Your Own Blog Network: WordPress Multisite

Creating a Social Network with BuddyPress

13 The WordPress Toolkit: Themes and Security

Essential Tasks: Themes and Security

Shopping for Themes

Finding Free Themes

Finding Premium Themes

Installing and Activating a Theme

Securing Your New Website

Security Considerations When Selecting a Theme for Your Blog

Protecting Your Site

Backup and Restore

14 The WordPress Toolkit: Plug-Ins

WordPress Modular Architecture

Defining a Plug-In

Finding Plug-Ins

Finding and Installing Plug-Ins from the Directory

Plug-In Compatibility

Finding Free Plug-Ins Outside the Directory

Finding Premium Plug-Ins

Manually Installing and Activating Plug-Ins

Downloading New Plug-Ins

Testing Your New Plug-In

Selection and Activation

Managing and Updating Plug-Ins

Making Your Site Mobile-Friendly

Fitting Your Site to the Small Screen

WordPress Mobile Apps

Some “Essential” Plug-Ins

Basic WordPress Plug-Ins: Akismet and Hello Dolly

WordPress.com Jetpack: A Starter Kit

Administration and Security

Posting Aids

Statistics

Comments, Forums, and Other Discussions

Advertising/Search Engine Optimization

Links

Multimedia

Social Networks

15 Style Sheets for Building Themes

Creating Style Sheets

Introducing XHTML

Defining Web Standards

XML and XHTML

Writing HTML-Friendly XHTML in WordPress

Introducing CSS

What CSS Is Meant to Do

What Is a Style Sheet?

Anatomy of a Style Sheet

Tweaking Theme Style Sheets

When Using an Existing Theme Is Good Enough

Tweaking an Existing Theme with the Theme Editor

Backing Up Themes to Preserve Your Choices

Creating a Child Theme

Some Common Tweaks

Creating a CSS-Based Theme from Scratch

16 PHP Basics: Themes and Plug-ins

Introducing PHP

PHP 4 Versus PHP 5

Installing PHP on Your Test or Development Server

Writing PHP Scripts: Basic Syntax

MySQL Database Tables for WordPress

Customizing Your Site with FUNCTIONS.PHP

Making Your Content More Findable with Custom Taxonomies

Helping Visitors to Get Around Your Site with Custom Menus

The Heart of WordPress: The Loop

What Does “The Loop” Do?

Creating a Featured Posts Loop with WP_Query

PHP Theme Templates

The Index Template

The Sidebar Template

The Header Template

The Footer Template

Examining an Existing Plug-In

Submitting to the WordPress Plugin Directory

Why Not Submit to the Plugin Directory?

Submitting to the Plugin Directory

Part V: Appendixes

A WordPress.com Versus WordPress.org

Choosing the Right WordPress for You

Naming of Parts

Choosing WordPress.org

Making Money with Your Blog

Automattic’s Ads on Your Site

Tapping the WordPress Community

Getting the Right Host

Choosing WordPress.com

B WordPress Documentation

Finding Your Way Through the Online Documents

The WordPress Codex

Problems with WordPress Documentation

Using Google to Access WordPress Documentation

C Examples of WordPress Blogs

Why Look at Famous Blogs?

XXL

Surfin’ Safari

Master of Arts in Teaching at USC

D Examples of WordPress.com Blogs

Equal Representation for .commies

Famous Quotes

The Outland Institute

Music at SFSU

E WordPress Site Maps

Navigating the WordPress Sites

Navigating WordPress.com

Home Page: http://wordpress.com

Support Options: http://en.support.wordpress.com

Forums: http://en.forums.wordpress.com/

Free Features: http://en.wordpress.com/features

Premium Features: http://en.wordpress.com/products

VIP Services: http://vip.wordpress.com

Theme Showcase: http://theme.wordpress.com

Popular Tags/Hot Topics: http://en.wordpress.com/tags

News: http://en.blog.wordpress.com

Stats

About Us: http://en.wordpress.com/about

Advanced Services: http://en.wordpress.com/advanced-services

Navigating WordPress.org

Home Page: http://wordpress.org

Showcase: http://wordpress.org/showcase

Themes, Plug-Ins, and Places to Complain: http://wordpress.org/extend

The World of WordPress: http://wordpress.org/about

Latest from the Developers: http://wordpress.org/news

Getting Help from Your Peers: http://wordpress.org/support

Finding a Host: http://wordpress.org/hosting

Downloading WordPress: http://wordpress.org/download

Learning from the Sources on WordPress.tv: http://wordpress.tv/

F Importing Content from Other Systems

Direct Import into WordPress

Transferring from Blogger/BlogSpot

Transferring from LiveJournal

Transferring from Movable Type/TypePad

Transferring from Posterous

Transferring from Textpattern

Indirect Transfer

Transferring from an RSS Feed

Transferring from (X)HTML Wordpress

G Writing SEO-Friendly Blog Posts

Know Your Purpose

Use Keywords

Get Links

Use Tags and Categories

Consider Using META Tags

Try Using Plug-Ins

Living in the Zone

Index