WordPress 3.7 Complete Third Edition will take you through the complete process of building a fully functional WordPress site from scratch. The journey goes all the way from teaching you how to install WordPress, to the most advanced topics such as creating your own themes, writing plugins, and even building non-blog websites. The best part is that you can do all this without losing your shirt along the way. Moreover, once you get some practice, you will be able to launch new WordPress sites within minutes (not a metaphor, by the way; this is as true as it gets).
This book guides you along the way in a step-by-step manner to explain everything there is to know about WordPress. We'll start with downloading and installing the core of WordPress, where you will learn how to choose the correct settings in order to guarantee a smooth experience for yourself and for your visitors. After that, the book will teach you all about content management functionality for your site from posts and pages to categories and tags, all the way to links, media, menus, images, galleries, administration, user profiles, and more. Next, you will find out what plugins and themes are and how to use them effectively. Finally, you'll learn how to create your own themes and plugins to enhance the overall functionality of your website. Once you're done with reading WordPress 3.7 Complete Third Edition, you will have all the knowledge required to build a professional WordPress site from scratch.
Chapter 1, Introducing WordPress, explains how WordPress is an excellent software that can run your website (blog or not). It's packed with excellent features and is so flexible that it can really do anything you want, and it has a wealth of online resources. Additionally, it's super easy to use, and you need no special skills or prior experience to use it. Last but not least, it is free!
Chapter 2, Getting Started, explains how to install WordPress on a remote server, change the basic default settings of your blog, write posts, and comment on those posts. It will also show you how to work with sites hosted on WordPress.com, which is one of the branches of the WordPress world.
Chapter 3, Creating Blog Content, teaches everything you need to know to add content to your blog and manage that content, be it about posts, categories, and comments, or tags, spam, and excerpts.
Chapter 4, Pages, Menus, Media Library, and More, explores all of the content WordPress can manage that's not directly about blogging. You can also learn about static pages, menus, bookmark links, the media library, image galleries, and more.
Chapter 5, Plugins and Widgets, discusses everything there is to know about finding the best plugins for WordPress and then using them effectively. Plugins are an integral part of every WordPress site's lifespan, so it's more than hard to imagine a successful site that isn't using any of them.
Chapter 6, Choosing and Installing Themes, describes how to manage the basic look of your WordPress website. You also learn where to find themes, why they are useful, and how to implement new themes on your WordPress website.
Chapter 7, Developing Your Own Theme, explains how to make your own theme. With just the most basic HTML and CSS abilities, you can create a design and turn it into a fully functional WordPress theme.
Chapter 8, Feeds, Podcasting, and Offline Blogging, explains what an RSS feed is and how to make feeds available for our WordPress blog. It also explores how to syndicate a whole blog or just posts within a certain category, and how to create your own podcast with or without the help of plugins. Finally, it goes on to discuss offline blogging and how it can speed up your web publishing experience.
Chapter 9, Developing Plugins and Widgets, teaches everything you need to know about creating basic plugins and widgets, how to structure the PHP files, where to put your functions, and how to use hooks. It also teaches about adding management pages and adding a widget that is related to a plugin.
Chapter 10, Community Blogging, explains how to manage a group of users working with a single blog, which is a community of users. Community blogging can play an important role in a user group or a news website. It also explains how to manage the different levels of privileges for users in a community.
Chapter 11, Creating a Non-blog Website Part One – The Basics, explores the endless possibilities of WordPress when it comes to using it to launch various types of websites. The chapter presents the first batch of our non-blog websites and explains in detail how to build them on top of a standard WordPress installation.
Chapter 12, Creating a Non-blog Website Part Two – Community Websites and Custom Content Elements, goes through some additional types of non-blog websites and also presents some technical aspects of building them (caution! code talk inside).
Chapter 13, Administrator's Reference, covers many of the common administrative tasks you may face when you're managing a WordPress-driven website. This includes backing up your database and files, moving your WordPress installation from one server or folder to another, and doing general problem-solving and troubleshooting. This chapter is the free one available online through a direct download link. Please hop over to our site to get it (http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/2407OS_Chapter13_Administrators_Reference.pdf).
The prerequisites for this book include the following:
A computer
A web browser
A text editor
FTP software
Users may like a text editor that highlights code (such as Coda, TextMate, HTMLKit, and so on), but a simple text editor is all that's required.
Users may like to run local copies of WordPress on their computers, in which case they need a server such as Apache and MySQL installed (though WAMP and MAMP would take care of all that for them), but it's also not necessary as they could do the entire thing remotely.
This book is a guide to WordPress for both beginners and those who have a slightly more advanced knowledge of WordPress. If you are new to blogging and want to create your own blog or website in a simple and straightforward manner, this book is for you. It is also for people who want to learn to customize and expand the capabilities of a WordPress website. You do not require any detailed knowledge of programming or web development, and any IT-confident user will be able to use the book to produce an impressive website.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "For instance, using the <p> tags is not necessary in the text editor, as they will be stripped by default."
A block of code is set as follows:
// ** MySQL settings ** //
define('DB_NAME', 'wptestblog');
define('DB_USER', 'localdbuser');
define('DB_PASSWORD', '62dcx%^_0hnm');
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
<div class="post post-item">
<div class="post-title">
<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
</div>
<?php if(has_post_thumbnail()) : ?>
<div class="post-image alignleft">
<?php echo '<a href="'.esc_url(get_permalink()).'" >'.get_the_post_thumbnail($post->ID, 'thumbnail').'</a>'; ?>
</div>
<?php endif; ?>
<div class="entry clearfix">
<p><em>by <?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, 'book_author', true); ?></em></p>
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
</div>
</div><!-- /.post-item -->New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "To add a new page, go to your WP Admin and navigate to Pages | Add New".
Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or may have disliked. Reader feedback is important for us to develop titles that you really get the most out of.
To send us general feedback, simply send an e-mail to <[email protected]>, and mention the book title via the subject of your message.
If there is a book that you need and would like to see us publish, please send us a note in the SUGGEST A TITLE form on www.packtpub.com or e-mail <[email protected]>.
If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide on www.packtpub.com/authors.
Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.
You can download the example code files for all Packt books you have purchased from your account at http://www.PacktPub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.PacktPub.com/support and register to have the files e-mailed directly to you.
Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in the text or the code—we would be grateful if you would report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/support, selecting your book, clicking on the errata submission form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded on our website, or added to any list of existing errata, under the Errata section of that title. Any existing errata can be viewed by selecting your title from http://www.packtpub.com/support.
Piracy of copyright material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works, in any form, on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy.
Please contact us at <[email protected]> with a link to the suspected pirated material.
We appreciate your help in protecting our authors, and our ability to bring you valuable content.
You can contact us at <[email protected]> if you are having a problem with any aspect of the book, and we will do our best to address it.