WordPress 3 complete : create your own complete website or blog from scratch with WordPress

325 Pages·2011·10.5 MB·English

by  April Hodge Silver

WordPress 3 Complete
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WordPress 3 Complete
Copyright © 2011 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written
permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in
critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy
of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is
sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author(s), nor Packt
Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages
caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the
companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals.
However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: January 2010
Production Reference: 1180111
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
32 Lincoln Road
Olton
Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 978-1-849514-10-1
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Charwak A ([email protected])
Table of Contents
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k.c Preface 1
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b Chapter 1: Introduction to WordPress 7
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o What is WordPress? 7
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w. Use it for a blog or a website 8
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w Blog: Definition and common terms 8
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Bo Why choose WordPress? 10
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W Active in development 10
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Large community of contributors 10
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d fr Amazingly extendable 10
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nlo Detailed feature list 11
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o New feature list since 2.7 11
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Learning more 13
Online WordPress resources 13
WordPress news 13
The Codex 14
Support from other users 15
Theme and plugin directories 15
WordPress.com 15
Summary 16
Chapter 2: Getting Started 17
Where to build your WordPress website 17
Using WordPress.com 19
Installing WordPress manually 22
Preparing the environment 22
Downloading WordPress 23
Upgrading from an earlier version of WordPress 24
Uploading the files 25
Table of Contents
Installing WordPress 27
Learning more 32
The WP Admin panel 32
Changing general blog information 35
Your first post 36
Your first comment 39
Retrieving a lost password 41
Summary 41
Chapter 3: Creating Blog Content 43
WP Admin conventions 43
Lists of items 43
Posting on your blog 45
Adding a simple post 45
Common post options 48
Categories and tags 49
Images in your posts 51
Using the Visual editor versus the HTML editor 57
Drafts, timestamps, and managing posts 58
Advanced post options 60
Excerpt and the MORE tag 60
Trackbacks 61
Discussion 62
Custom Fields 63
Protecting content 64
Pretty permalinks 65
Additional writing options 66
Press This 66
Posting via e-mail 67
Discussion on your blog—comments 68
Adding a comment 68
Discussion settings 70
Submission, notification, and moderation settings 70
When to moderate or blacklist a comment 72
Avatar display settings 73
Moderating comments 74
How to eliminate comment spam 76
Getting a WordPress.com API key 77
Activating Akismet 78
Adding and managing categories 80
Summary 81
Chapter 4: Pages, Plugins, Image Galleries Menus, and More 83
Pages 83
Adding a page 84
Managing pages 88
[ ii ]
Table of Contents
Menus 88
Adding a Menu 89
Displaying a Menu 92
Widgets 93
Links 94
Adding a new link 96
Displaying links 97
Managing links and categories 99
Media library 100
Adding plugins 102
Finding your plugin 103
Installing and activating the plugin 103
Auto-installation 104
Download, (unzip?), upload 105
Configuring and/or implementing—if necessary 107
Adding an image gallery 108
Choosing a post or page 109
Uploading images 110
Using a lightbox plugin 114
Making your website mobile-friendly 116
Summary 118
Chapter 5: Choosing and Installing Themes 119
Finding themes 120
WordPress Theme Directory 120
Finding more themes 123
Some theme basics 123
What makes a theme? 124
Factors to consider when choosing a theme 124
Installing and changing themes 125
Adding a theme within the WP Admin 125
Downloading, extracting, uploading 129
Summary 131
Chapter 6: Developing Your Own Theme 133
Setting up your design 134
Designing your theme to be WordPress-friendly 134
Converting your design to code 136
Examining the HTML structure 137
Examining the CSS 140
Converting your build into a theme 146
Creating the theme folder 146
[ iii ]
Table of Contents
Adding WordPress content 151
The <head> tag 151
The header and footer 152
The sidebar 155
Main column—the loop 157
Creating templates within your theme 162
Understanding the WordPress theme 162
Breaking it up 163
header.php 163
footer.php 163
sidebar.php 164
Your four template files 165
Archive template 166
Single template 168
Page template 171
Generated classes for body and post 172
Other WordPress templates 173
Creating and using a custom template 174
Making your theme widget-friendly 178
Making sure your sidebar is one big <ul> tag 178
Adding functions.php 179
Adding conditional code to sidebar 179
Adding some widgets 180
Further widgetizing options 181
Learning more 181
Enabling a menu in your theme 182
Creating a child theme 183
Creating the new theme directory 183
Creating the stylesheet 183
Using your child theme 184
Sharing your theme 185
Summary 186
Chapter 7: Feeds and Podcasting 187
Feed basics 188
Feed readers 188
Learning more 189
Your built-in WordPress feeds 190
Adding feed links 191
Feeds for the whole website 192
Feeds for categories 194
Feeds for post comments 195
[ iv ]
Table of Contents
Tracking subscribers with FeedBurner 196
Burn your feed on FeedBurner 196
FeedBurner plugin 197
Podcasting 198
Creating a podcast 198
Record yourself 198
Make a post 199
Dedicated podcasting 201
Podcasting plugins 203
Using a service to host audio files for free 204
Summary 204
Chapter 8: Developing Plugins and Widgets 205
Plugins 205
Plugin code requirements 206
Basic plugin—adding link icons 206
Naming and organizing the plugin files 207
Writing the plugin's core functions 208
Adding hooks to the plugin 209
Trying out the plugin 211
Adding an admin page 213
Adding management page functions 214
Modifying the regex() function 216
Adding hooks 217
Trying out the plugin 217
Plugin with DB access—capturing searched words 218
Getting the plugin to talk to the database 219
Adding management page functions 219
Adding hooks 220
Trying out the plugin 221
Learning more 222
Widgets 223
Recent posts from a Category Widget 223
Naming the widget 224
Widget structure 224
Widget initiation function 225
Widget form function 226
Widget save function 228
Widget print function 229
Initiate and hook up the widget 230
Final widget code 230
Trying out the widget 233
Learning more 234
Bundling a widget with a plugin 235
[ v ]
Table of Contents
Shortcodes 235
How do shortcodes work? 235
Creating a simple shortcode 235
Adding options to the shortcode 237
Enabling shortcodes in widgets 239
Summary 240
Chapter 9: Community Blogging 241
Concerns for a multiuser blog 241
Users roles and abilities 242
Administrator 242
Editor 242
Author 244
Contributor 245
Subscriber 245
Managing users 246
Enabling users to self-register 249
Learning more 250
User management plugins 251
Creating a multi-site website 252
Summary 253
Chapter 10: Creating a Non-Blog Website 255
Our client is a bookstore 255
The Design 256
New features covered in this chapter 261
Introducing the initial theme 261
What we are starting with 262
Initial theme files and functionality 262
functions.php 262
header.php 263
footer.php 264
index.php 264
Setting up the starter content 265
Checking out the frontend 268
Adding plugins 270
Contact Form 7 271
April's Call Posts 273
Smooth Slider 275
Installing the plugin 275
Adding content to the plugin 276
Adding the plugin to your theme 277
[ vi ]
Table of Contents
Creating a custom post type: book 279
Registering a new post type 279
Adding labels 280
Adding messages 281
Creating book template files 284
Registering and using a custom taxonomy 288
Customizing the admin display 290
Finalizing the bookstore website 292
Summary 293
Chapter 11: Administrator's Reference 295
System requirements 295
Enabling permalinks 296
The importance of backing up 296
Easy, quick, frequent content backups 296
Backing up everything 297
Verifying your backups 297
Upgrading WordPress 298
What about the built-in upgrader? 298
Do it gradually for a big jump 298
Steps for upgrading 298
Backing up your database 299
Backing up your WordPress files 299
Put WordPress in Maintenance Mode 299
Deactivating all your plugins 299
Downloading and extracting WordPress 300
Deleting old files 300
Uploading the new files 300
Running the WordPress upgrade program 300
Updating permalinks and .htaccess 301
Installing updated plugins and themes 301
Migrating or restoring a WordPress site 301
Setting file permissions 303
What are file permissions? 303
Permissions for WordPress 303
How to set permissions 304
Troubleshooting 304
Troubleshooting during installation 304
Headers already sent 304
Page comes with only PHP code 305
Cannot connect to MySQL database 305
[ vii ]
Table of Contents
Basic troubleshooting 306
Cannot see posts 306
Making a site totally private 306
I don't receive the e-mailed passwords 307
Tips for theme development 307
Template tags 307
Class styles generated by WordPress 310
Learning more 310
Summary 311
Index 313
[ viii ]