Table Of Content

WordPress MU 2.8 Beginner's Guide Build your own blog network with unlimited users and blogs, forums, photo galleries, and more! Lesley A. Harrison BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by JEROME RAYMOND on 30th October 2009 125 Louis ST, , So. Hackensack, , 07606 WordPress MU 2.8 Beginner’s Guide Copyright © 2009 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, Packt Publishing, nor its dealers or 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 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: October 2009 Production Reference: 1211009 Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. 32 Lincoln Road Olton Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK. ISBN 978-1-847196-54-5 www.packtpub.com Cover Image by Vinayak Chittar ([email protected]) This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by JEROME RAYMOND on 30th October 2009 125 Louis ST, , So. Hackensack, , 07606 Credits Author Editorial Team Leader Lesley A. Harrison Gagandeep Singh Reviewers Project Team Leader Joseph Arellano Priya Mukherji Lee Jordon Project Coordinator Acquisition Editor Zainab Bagasrawala David Barnes Proofreader Development Editor Jade Schuler Amey Kanse Production Coordinator Technical Editor Shantanu Zagade Gaurav Datar Cover Work Copy Editor Shantanu Zagade Sanchari Mukherjee Indexer Hemangini Bari This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by JEROME RAYMOND on 30th October 2009 125 Louis ST, , So. Hackensack, , 07606 About the Author Lesley Harrison has more than ten years of experience working in the world of IT. She has served as a web developer for various local organizations, a systems administrator for a multinational IT outsourcing company, and later a database administrator for a British utility company. Today, Lesley runs her own video gaming site, Myth-Games.com, and works as a freelance web developer. She works with clients all over the world to develop Joomla! and WordPress/WordPress MU web sites. Lesley has enjoyed seeing the Internet develop from the days of newsgroups and static HTML pages, to the vast and interactive World Wide Web of today. She worked as a reviewer on Daniel Chapman's Joomla 1.5 Customization book, which was published by Packt Publishing in August 2009. I would like to thank my husband Mark for his patience while I was writing this book instead of leveling one of my many characters. I would also like to thank Blaenk Denum for his help with the reCAPTCHA plugin, and the Packt Publishing team for their patience and guidance over the past year. This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by JEROME RAYMOND on 30th October 2009 125 Louis ST, , So. Hackensack, , 07606 About the Reviewers Lee Jordon is an avid user of WordPress, Blogger, Twitter, and other useful web applications. She designs interactive customer service portals, enterprise-level web sites, other web-based applications, and writes web content and user guides. Her toolbox includes HTML, PHP, JavaScript, Java Servlets, MySQL, Flash, Dreamweaver, and Photoshop. She applies over 10 years of experience of designing and writing for the Web to develop interactive, user friendly web sites and writing technical guides to popular web technologies. She is the author of two books with Packt Publishing: Blogger: Beyond the Basics and Project Management with dotProject. Joseph Arellano holds a B.A. in Communication Arts from the University of the Pacific and a J.D. (law degree) from the University of Southern California. He lives in Northern California and maintains the Joseph’s Reviews book review blogsite (http://josephsreviews. wordpress.com/). This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by JEROME RAYMOND on 30th October 2009 125 Louis ST, , So. Hackensack, , 07606 This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by JEROME RAYMOND on 30th October 2009 125 Louis ST, , So. Hackensack, , 07606 Table of Contents Preface 1 Chapter 1: Introducing WordPress MU 7 What is WordPress MU 8 Making your own social blog network 10 What is BuddyPress 10 What is bbPress 12 Making and hosting my site 13 Choosing between VPS, dedicated, and grid hosting 14 VPS 14 Server requirements for WordPress MU 15 Recommended WordPress MU hosts 16 Building our example site: The SlayerCafe 16 Planning your site 17 Summary 18 Chapter 2: Installing WordPress MU 19 Tools you will need 19 Text editors 19 FTP clients and other tools 20 Setting up a local web server 20 Time for action – getting your server set up 20 Databases with MySQL 22 Preparing for WordPress MU—creating a database 23 Time for action – creating a database for WordPress MU 23 Time for action – subdomains for WordPress MU 24 Preparing your live server 26 Time for action – working with cPanel 26 User blogs with subdomains 26 Time for action – subdomains under WHM 27 This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by JEROME RAYMOND on 30th October 2009 125 Louis ST, , So. Hackensack, , 07606 Table of Contents One last thing—wildcards and Apache 28 Installing WordPress MU 29 Time for action – getting WordPress MU up and running 30 Changing the admin password 33 Time for action – changing the admin password 34 Letting people register 34 Time for action – enabling registrations 34 Testing your site 35 Time for action – creating a new user 36 Summary 37 Chapter 3: Customizing the Appearance of Your Site 39 Picking out a theme 39 Installing your new theme 40 Time for action – installing a new theme 41 Styling the sign-up page 44 Time for action – editing your theme 45 Setting the theme for your users' blogs 47 Time for action – changing the default blog theme 47 Customizing your home page 50 Time for action – making a sign-up button 50 Featured posts 51 Time for action – featured posts 52 Showing off your statistics 56 Time for action – simple stats 56 Displaying recent posts and comments 59 Time for action – displaying the most active blogs 59 Customizing AHP Sitewide Recent Posts plugin 61 Time for action – tweaking the recent post display options 61 Displaying Sitewide recent comments plugin 63 Time for action – Sitewide recent comments 63 The plugin display code 66 Time for action – our improved home page 67 Other important points 67 Summary 68 Chapter 4: Letting Users Manage Their Blogs 69 User management basics 69 Preparing the site for our users 70 Banned Names 70 Customization options for your users 72 Time for action – offering a selection of themes 73 [ ii ] This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by JEROME RAYMOND on 30th October 2009 125 Louis ST, , So. Hackensack, , 07606 Table of Contents User editable themes 74 Time for action – userthemes revisited 75 User roles and admin panels 78 Time for action – setting user levels and changing the user's 79 admin panel 79 Hiding the dashboard 81 Time for action – hiding the dashboard 81 More user options – privacy and using their own domain 83 Time for action – domain mapping 83 A few things to consider 86 Summary 86 Chapter 5: Protecting Your Site 89 Signing up for reCAPTCHA 90 Stopping spam with reCAPTCHA and Bad Behavior 90 Time for action – setting up reCAPTCHA 90 Bad Behavior 93 Time for action – setting up Bad Behavior 93 Making sure the plugins run for your users 98 Time for action – managing your users' plugins 98 Blocking bad guys with .htaccess 101 Time for action – .htaccess settings to stop bad guys 102 Other useful plugins 105 Moderating registrations 105 Taming your default categories 106 Regular backups without lifting a finger 107 Time for action – automatic backups 107 Summary 109 Chapter 6: Increasing Traffic to Your Blog 111 Improved tagging 111 Time for action – tagging blog posts 112 Sitewide tags 114 Time for action – sitewide tag clouds 114 Using pings 117 Time for action – pings 117 Trackbacks 118 Offering RSS feeds 120 Time for action – offering RSS subscription options 120 FeedBurner 122 Time for action – let's burn some feeds 122 Twitter and social bookmarking 126 Getting your readers to share posts 126 [ iii ] This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by JEROME RAYMOND on 30th October 2009 125 Louis ST, , So. Hackensack, , 07606