Synopses & Reviews
Whether youre a budding blogger or web development professional, WordPress is a brilliant tool for creating websites—if you know how to tap its impressive features. This jargon-free Missing Manual shows you how to use WordPress and its themes, plug-ins, and widgets to build just about any website you can imagine, from a classy blog to a basic e-commerce site.
The important stuff you need to know:
- Create a blog. Get a free WordPress.com account, choose the right theme, and start publishing content.
- Build a website. Produce a professional-looking business site by customizing a WordPress theme.
- Add features. Choose from thousands of WordPress widgets and plug-ins to extend your sites features.
- Mix in multimedia. Include slideshows, video clips, webcasts, podcasts, and music players.
- Involve your readers. Let readers leave comments, contribute to your site, and carry on a dialog.
- Build an audience. Learn search-engine optimization, measure your readers favorite pages, and publicize your site.
- Create a community. Use social media tools such as “Like” and sharing buttons, and provide RSS feeds of your posts.
Synopsis
WordPress lets you build everything from a simple blog to a full-blown, dynamic website, but the program's rich feature set can be difficult to master. This jargon-free book walks you through the process of creating your WordPress site, whether you're a beginner launching a blog, a webmaster building a corporate site, or an experienced WordPress user looking for tips, tricks, and additional detail. You'll find lots advice and instructions to guide you everything from creating your first page to ongoing management of your site.
About the Author
Matthew MacDonald is an author, educator, and software developer. He is the author or several books about .NET, including The Book of VB .NET (No Starch), ASP.NET: The Complete Reference (McGraw-Hill), Microsoft .NET Distributed Applications (Microsoft Press), and several more. He is a regular columnist for Inside Visual Basic, and has been involved in non-programming writing projects like the classical All-Music Guide. In a dimly remember past life, he studied English literature and theoretical physics.
Table of Contents
The Missing Credits; About the Author; About the Creative Team; Acknowledgments; The Missing Manual Series; Introduction; The Very Basics of Reading This Book; About WordPress; About this Book; About the Online Resources; Using Code Examples; Safari® Books Online; Part 1: Starting Out with WordPress; Chapter 1: The WordPress Landscape; 1.1 How WordPress Works; 1.2 What You Can Build with WordPress; 1.3 WordPress Hosting; Chapter 2: Signing Up with WordPress.com; 2.1 Choosing a Web Address; 2.2 Creating Your WordPress.com Account; 2.3 The WordPress.com Community; Chapter 3: Installing WordPress on Your Web Host; 3.1 Preparing for WordPress; 3.2 Installing WordPress with an Autoinstaller; 3.3 Installing WordPress by Hand; 3.4 Maintaining Your Site; Part 2: Building a WordPress Blog; Chapter 4: Creating Posts; 4.1 Introducing the Dashboard; 4.2 Adding Your First Post; 4.3 Organizing Your Posts; 4.4 How to Get High-Quality URLs; 4.5 Dashboard Tricks to Save Time and Effort; Chapter 5: Choosing and Polishing Your WordPress Theme; 5.1 How Themes Work; 5.2 Tweaking Your Theme; 5.3 Customizing Your Widgets; 5.4 Choosing a New Theme; Chapter 6: Jazzing Up Your Posts; 6.1 Making Fancier Posts; 6.2 Using Pictures; 6.3 The Media Library; 6.4 Showing Part of a Post; Chapter 7: Adding Pages and Menus; 7.1 Creating Pages; 7.2 Viewing Pages; 7.3 Custom Menus; 7.4 Changing Your Home Page; Chapter 8: Comments: Letting Your Readers Talk Back; 8.1 Allowing or Forbidding Comments; 8.2 The Life Cycle of a Comment; 8.3 The Ongoing Conversation; 8.4 Making Comments More Personal; 8.5 Stamping Out Comment Spam; Part 3: Supercharging Your Blog; Chapter 9: Getting New Features with Plug-Ins; 9.1 Managing Plug-Ins; 9.2 The Jetpack Plug-In; 9.3 Adding Mobile Support; 9.4 Backing Up a WordPress Site; 9.5 Better Performance with Caching; Chapter 10: Adding Picture Galleries, Video, and Music; 10.1 Understanding Embeds and Shortcodes; 10.2 Showing Groups of Pictures; 10.3 Embedding a Video Window; 10.4 Playing Audio Files; Chapter 11: Collaborating with Multiple Authors; 11.1 Adding Users to Your Site; 11.2 Working with Authors; 11.3 Building a Private Community; 11.4 Creating a Network of Sites; Chapter 12: Attracting a Crowd; 12.1 Encouraging Your Readers to Share; 12.2 Keeping Readers in the Loop; 12.3 Notifying Readers by Using Feeds; 12.4 Search Engine Optimization; 12.5 WordPress Site Statistics; Part 4: From Blog to Website; Chapter 13: Editing Themes: The Key to Customizing Your Site; 13.1 The Goal: More Flexible Blogs and Sites; 13.2 Taking Control of Your Theme; 13.3 Protecting Yourself with a Child Theme; 13.4 Editing the Styles in Your Theme; 13.5 Editing the Code in Your Theme; Chapter 14: Building an Advanced WordPress Site; 14.1 Planning Your Site; 14.2 Creating Custom Category Pages; 14.3 Building a Better Home Page; 14.4 From Post to Product Page; 14.5 Adding E-Commerce; Part 5: Appendixes; Migrating from WordPress.com; Before You Begin; Transferring Your Data; Cleaning Up Your New Site; Useful Websites; Chapter Links;