Beginning WordPress 3

433 Pages·2·10.914 MB·English

by  Stephanie Leary

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Beginning WordPress 3
Beginning
Dear Reader,
W
When I began looking for WordPress books, I found plenty of incredibly basic
guides for blogging and a few hardcore advanced guides for developers, but
nothing in-between for beginners who want to get more out of WordPress. This
book fills that gap. It’s a beginning developer guide that treats WordPress like o Beginning
the powerful content management system it has become. If you’re a web devel-
Stephanie Leary oper who already understands HTML, CSS, and maybe a little PHP, but you’ve
r
never used WordPress before, this book is for you.
Inside, you’ll learn how to install, configure, and customize WordPress to d
make it the perfect CMS for your next project. It walks you through the com- WordPress 3
plete development of a WordPress site, starting with importing content from
P
another CMS, or creating your own from scratch. You’ll then learn how to cre-
ate custom themes that give you complete control over your site’s appearance,
including optimizing it for that that all-important search engine optimization. r
You’ll see how to extend WordPress with widgets and plugins when your needs
e
outstrip the built-in features. Finally, you’ll learn how to secure your WordPress
installation and optimize its performance.
s
This book also covers two of the big new features in WordPress version 3:
custom content types, which let you take your content beyond basic blog posts
Make great websites the easy way
and pages, and the network (the integration of WordPress MU into the core s
software), which lets you build numerous connected WordPress sites from a
single software installation.
The code samples in this book include two themes that you can customize 3
fully, and several complete plugins that you can work through and modify. By
the end of the book you will have the knowledge to create your own plugins and
share them with other users on the WordPress Extend site. Every example in
this book was taken from a real-world project and has been tested and proven
A complete beginner's guide to WordPress that
out in the open. I hope that all of the information, examples, and source code
provided in this book helps you learn to use and adapt WordPress in your own shows you how to create a customized website for
Companion eBook
work, and to create some great sites. I look forward to seeing them. yourself, your business, or your social network
Stephanie Leary

See last page for details
on $10 eBook version
Stephanie Leary
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Beginning WordPress 3

(cid:132) (cid:132) (cid:132)
Stephanie Leary
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Beginning WordPress 3
Copyright © 2010 by Stephanie Leary
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
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(cid:132) CONTENTS
Contents at a Glance
(cid:132) Contents.................................................................................................................iv
(cid:132) About the Author..................................................................................................xvi
(cid:132) About the Technical Reviewer............................................................................xvii
(cid:132) Acknowledgments.............................................................................................xviii
(cid:132) Introduction.........................................................................................................xix
(cid:132) Chapter 1: About WordPress...................................................................................1
(cid:132) Chapter 2: Installing and Upgrading.....................................................................15
(cid:132) Chapter 3: Dashboard and Settings......................................................................41
(cid:132) Chapter 4: Working with Content..........................................................................61
(cid:132) Chapter 5: Importing Content.............................................................................105
(cid:132) Chapter 6: Creating a Basic Theme ....................................................................125
(cid:132) Chapter 7: Creating an Advanced Theme............................................................173
(cid:132) Chapter 8: Creating Widgets...............................................................................205
(cid:132) Chapter 9: Creating Plugins................................................................................225
(cid:132) Chapter 10: Users and Roles...............................................................................271
(cid:132) Chapter 11: Performance and Security ..............................................................289
(cid:132) Chapter 12: Custom Content Types, Taxonomies, and Fields.............................309
(cid:132) Chapter 13: Setting up the Network...................................................................347
(cid:132) Appendix 1: Plugin Index....................................................................................373
(cid:132) Appendix 2: Theme Functions.............................................................................381
(cid:132) Appendix 3: Plugin Recipes................................................................................385
(cid:132) Index...................................................................................................................389
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(cid:132) CONTENTS
Contents
(cid:132) Contents at a Glance..............................................................................................iii
(cid:132) Contents.................................................................................................................iv
(cid:132) About the Author..................................................................................................xvi
(cid:132) About the Technical Reviewer............................................................................xvii
(cid:132) Acknowledgments.............................................................................................xviii
(cid:132) Introduction.........................................................................................................xix
(cid:132) Chapter 1: About WordPress...................................................................................1
Why WordPress?................................................................................................................1
Easy to Set Up..........................................................................................................................................1
Easy to Use...............................................................................................................................................2
Easy to Extend..........................................................................................................................................3
The Business Benefits of WordPress........................................................................................................4
Sites Built with WordPress................................................................................................4
Personal Blogs..........................................................................................................................................4
Blog Networks..........................................................................................................................................6
Social Networks........................................................................................................................................8
Colleges and Universities.........................................................................................................................9
Small Businesses...................................................................................................................................10
WordPress Tour...............................................................................................................11
Anatomy of a post...................................................................................................................................12
Summary.........................................................................................................................14
(cid:132) Chapter 2: Installing and Upgrading.....................................................................15
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(cid:132) CONTENTS
System Requirements.....................................................................................................15
One-click Installation.......................................................................................................15
Installation Using the Web Interface................................................................................16
Logging In........................................................................................................................20
Editing and Uploading wp-config.php..............................................................................22
Troubleshooting...............................................................................................................23
Installing Themes............................................................................................................25
Installing Plugins.............................................................................................................28
Plugging the gaps: Essential Plugins......................................................................................................32
Upgrading Plugins..................................................................................................................................33
Upgrading WordPress......................................................................................................35
Automatic Upgrades...............................................................................................................................36
Manual Upgrades....................................................................................................................................38
Moving a WordPress Site.................................................................................................39
Summary.........................................................................................................................40
(cid:132) Chapter 3: Dashboard and Settings......................................................................41
The Dashboard.................................................................................................................42
QuickPress..............................................................................................................................................43
Incoming Links.......................................................................................................................................43
WordPress Development Blog................................................................................................................44
Plugin dashboard widgets......................................................................................................................44
Dashboard Widgets and Users...............................................................................................................44
Settings............................................................................................................................45
General...................................................................................................................................................45
Writing....................................................................................................................................................47
Reading..................................................................................................................................................48
Discussion..............................................................................................................................................49
Media......................................................................................................................................................54
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(cid:132) CONTENTS
Privacy....................................................................................................................................................56
Permalinks..............................................................................................................................................57
Summary.........................................................................................................................59
(cid:132) Chapter 4: Working with Content..........................................................................61
Posts................................................................................................................................61
Content...................................................................................................................................................63
Permalinks..............................................................................................................................................70
Publish Settings......................................................................................................................................70
Categories..............................................................................................................................................71
Tags........................................................................................................................................................72
Featured Images.....................................................................................................................................74
Excerpts..................................................................................................................................................75
Comments and Trackbacks....................................................................................................................75
Revisions................................................................................................................................................77
Custom Fields.........................................................................................................................................78
Pages...............................................................................................................................78
Page Attributes: Parents, Templates, and Order....................................................................................78
Posts vs. Pages: Same, but Different...............................................................................82
Posts are Pages; Pages are Posts..........................................................................................................83
Editing Posts and Pages.........................................................................................................................83
Media Files......................................................................................................................88
Images and Galleries..............................................................................................................................88
Video.......................................................................................................................................................94
Audio......................................................................................................................................................96
Other File Types......................................................................................................................................97
The Media Library...................................................................................................................................97
Links................................................................................................................................98
Basic Link Attributes..............................................................................................................................98
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Link Relationships: XFN™......................................................................................................................99
Advanced Link Attributes......................................................................................................................101
Link Feed..............................................................................................................................................101
Feeds.............................................................................................................................101
Summary.......................................................................................................................103
(cid:132) Chapter 5: Importing Content.............................................................................105
Before Importing............................................................................................................105
Importing Blogs.............................................................................................................105
Importing from WordPress.com............................................................................................................107
Importing from Blogger........................................................................................................................110
Importing Joomla or Mambo Sites.................................................................................113
Importing Other MySQL-based Sites.............................................................................116
Drupal...................................................................................................................................................116
Importing HTML Files.....................................................................................................117
After Importing: Fixing What’s Broken...........................................................................120
Link URLs..............................................................................................................................................120
Paths to Linked Files............................................................................................................................121
Truncated or Garbled Content..............................................................................................................122
Summary.......................................................................................................................123
(cid:132) Chapter 6: Creating a Basic Theme ....................................................................125
Using Widgets................................................................................................................125
Using Menus..................................................................................................................127
Creating a Menu...................................................................................................................................127
Editing Menu Items...............................................................................................................................128
Creating Multiple Menus......................................................................................................................129
Using Header and Background Images..........................................................................130
Turning HTML into a Theme...........................................................................................132
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(cid:132) CONTENTS
Header..................................................................................................................................................134
Body......................................................................................................................................................135
Footer...................................................................................................................................................141
Stylesheet.............................................................................................................................................141
Template Tags...............................................................................................................142
Theme Files...................................................................................................................144
Theme File Hierarchy.....................................................................................................145
The Home Page....................................................................................................................................146
Single Posts..........................................................................................................................................146
Pages....................................................................................................................................................146
Custom Content Types..........................................................................................................................146
Category Archives.................................................................................................................................147
Tag Archives.........................................................................................................................................147
Custom Taxonomy Archives.................................................................................................................147
Author Archives....................................................................................................................................148
Date-Based Archives............................................................................................................................148
Search Results......................................................................................................................................148
Error 404 (File Not Found) Page...........................................................................................................148
Attachment Pages................................................................................................................................149
Listing Comments..........................................................................................................149
Including Additional Files...............................................................................................151
Styling Content..............................................................................................................151
Changing Appearance Based on Context.......................................................................151
Conditional Tags...................................................................................................................................152
Posts vs. Pages.....................................................................................................................................153
Categories............................................................................................................................................153
Author Archives....................................................................................................................................154
Search Results......................................................................................................................................155
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