Head First WordPress

Head First WordPress

by Jeff Siarto
Released July 2010
Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ISBN: 9780596806286

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Book description

Whether you're promoting your business or writing about your travel adventures, Head First WordPress will teach you not only how to make your blog look unique and attention-grabbing, but also how to dig into the more complex functionality available on the WordPress platform. You'll learn how to customize your blog with your own URL, templates, plugin functionality, and more.

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Advance Praise for Head First WordPress
  3. Praise for other Head First books
  4. Title Page
  5. Copyright Page
  6. Dedication
  7. Table of Contents (Summary)
  8. Table of Contents (the real thing)
  9. how to use this book Intro
    1. Who is this book for?
      1. Who should probably back away from this book?
    2. We know what you’re thinking.
    3. And we know what your brain is thinking.
    4. Metacognition: thinking about thinking
      1. So just how DO you get your brain to think that WordPress is a hungry tiger?
    5. Here’s what WE did:
    6. Here’s what YOU can do to bend your brain into submission
    7. Read me
  10. The technical review team
  11. Acknowledgments
  12. Safari® Books Online
  13. 1 getting started WordPress from scratch
    1. Web publishing for the masses
    2. How WordPress works: the 30,000-foot view
    3. The lifecycle of a WordPress blog post
    4. The Acme Bit and Pixel Company
      1. Acme Bit needs a blog, stat!
    5. Download WordPress
    6. The “famous” 5-minute WordPress Install®
      1. To install WordPress from scratch, start with the readme.html
      2. Use a web hosting company for your web server
    7. Upload your WordPress files to the web server
      1. Start with an FTP client
    8. FTP client options
    9. WordPress installation step 2: Configuration
    10. WordPress stores all your stuff in a database
    11. Create a new database from your hosting panel
      1. Media Temple Control Panel
    12. Almost there...
    13. Every blog needs a title
    14. Pilot your blog with the WordPress dashboard
    15. Create your first blog post
    16. Use both editors when creating new posts
      1. Visual Editor
      2. Markup Editor
    17. Use Preview to check your post before you publish
    18. Your first post is now live!
    19. Remove or replace sample posts before you go live
    20. You don’t need Photoshop to edit an image
      1. GIMP
      2. Picnik
      3. Paint.NET
    21. Add an image using the media library
      1. In-post upload
      2. Media Library
    22. Uh-oh...
      1. Prepare to upload
    23. Update group permissions to get image uploads working
    24. Adjusting images within the post editor
    25. Edit your post to move the text down a line
    26. Welcome to the Bit Blog
    27. Your WordPress Toolbox
  14. 2 changing your blog’s look and feel A question of style
    1. A tale of two sites
    2. The Acme Bit Company home page
    3. Anatomy of a WordPress theme
      1. A theme tells WordPress how and where to display your content and images
    4. WordPress themes are a collection of template files...
    5. ... all working in concert
    6. PHP is the logic behind your theme
    7. Always use the .php extension for WordPress theme files
    8. Create a new theme
    9. Stylesheets dictate the look and feel of pages in WordPress
    10. Rules do a lot of work for you
    11. WordPress uses stylesheets two different ways
    12. Stylesheets identify elements in your HTML
    13. Putting it all together
    14. Everything looks good but the sidebars
    15. Update your sidebar content with widgets
    16. Drag and drop widgets where you want them
    17. One theme to rule them all
    18. Your WordPress Toolbox
  15. 3 content management with wordpress Beyond the blog
    1. WordPress is a content management system
    2. WordPress has three main management sections
    3. WordPress pages are just posts “outside” the blog
    4. Pages are the backbone of your CMS
    5. Adding a new page is just like adding a new post
    6. http://acmebit.com/?pageid=23...
    7. Make your URLs manageable with permalinks
    8. Permalinks are handled by the web server
    9. Page Not Found?
    10. Minding your .htaccess file
    11. Build your pages with the visual editor
      1. About (/about)
      2. Contact (/contact)
    12. All pages are not created equal
    13. Build navigation using the WordPress menu system
    14. Modify your theme to enable the navigation menu
    15. Use CSS rules to control what shows up in the menu
      1. Update the CSS to make the menu play nice with the rest of the site
    16. WordPress has different home page options
    17. No more blog... No more home page either?
    18. Add HTML to your new home page template file
    19. Then add the Acme site style rules to your CSS file
    20. Your WordPress Toolbox
  16. 4 users, categories, and tags Keeping things organized
    1. You’re the new editor of Thanks for Mutton
    2. WordPress user roles
    3. The anatomy of a WordPress user
    4. A sample user profile
    5. Match users to their appropriate roles
    6. Avoid chaos with an editorial workflow
    7. Review pending posts from the admin dashboard
      1. Things are starting to look more organized...
    8. Categories are big buckets for your content
    9. Categories help organize your content
    10. Content is key when creating category structures
    11. Leftover categories often make good tags
    12. Writers want their pictures next to their posts
    13. Gravatar makes user pictures easy
    14. Gravatar works with your email address
    15. Gravatar supports WordPress comments out-of-the-box
      1. Extending Gravatar’s functionality
      2. functions.php
    16. Your WordPress Toolbox
  17. 5 video and plug-ins Getting things moving
    1. Adding video to Thanks for Mutton
    2. Host your videos outside WordPress
    3. Hosting with Vimeo
    4. Upload your video to Vimeo
    5. Plug-ins make working with other web services easier
    6. Find a plug-in for almost anything in the Plugin Directory
    7. Browse and install plug-ins from within WordPress
    8. Vimeo short code
    9. Add additional content and files to your post
    10. Use the media gallery to attach other files
    11. Use categories to create a video section
    12. thanksformutton.com/categories/video
    13. Use the “more” tag to clean up your home page
  18. 6 podcasting and syndication Spreading the word
    1. The Thanks for Mutton podcast
    2. WordPress is your hub for content distribution
    3. The anatomy of a podcast
    4. RSS is one way the Web syndicates content
    5. The lifecycle of an RSS feed
    6. WordPress publishes an RSS feed automatically
    7. Vimeo doesn’t work well with podcasting
    8. Where’s the video?
    9. WordPress embeds its own videos too
    10. Add some info to your iTunes feed
    11. Use a plug-in to build a special feed for iTunes
      1. Most plug-ins embed media and generate a special feed
    12. TSG Podcasting Plug-in
    13. Use the Podcasting Plug-in to embed videos for podcasts
    14. Feedburner gives you podcast stats
    15. Override feeds in the header of our theme
    16. Welcome to the Thanks for Mutton podcast
  19. 7 securing wordpress Locking things down
    1. Something’s not right here...
    2. You’ve been hacked
      1. Brute force attacks
      2. Server attacks
      3. Denial of Service (how dare they!)
    3. Keep your WordPress installation and plug-ins up-to-date
    4. Avoid file uploads with automatic updates
    5. Use FTP to update WordPress if automatic updates don’t work
    6. Secure users make secure websites
    7. Edit your database to change usernames
    8. Databases are made up of tables
    9. Add more security to WordPress by protecting wp-admin
    10. Create a new authentication realm
    11. Security by obscurity
    12. You can learn a lot about a site by looking at its head
    13. Back up early, back up often
    14. Use plug-ins for remote, automated backups
    15. Don’t store backups on your web server
      1. Amazon S3
    16. Connect automated backups to Amazon S3
    17. Restoring your backups
    18. Import a backed-up database using phpMyAdmin
    19. Your WordPress Toolbox
  20. 8 making wordpress fast Time for the passing lane
    1. Not again...
    2. Keep an eye on your traffic with Google Analytics
    3. Integrating Google Analytics with WordPress
    4. Your site traffic has a lot to say...
      1. ... but it can’t tell you everything
    5. You’ve been Dugg
    6. The anatomy of a web page request
      1. PHP
      2. MySQL Database
      3. HTTP Communication
    7. WordPress performance checklist
      1. ⃞ Caching
      2. ⃞ Database optimization
      3. ⃞ Reduce server requests
      4. ⃞ The web server
    8. Speed up WordPress with caching
    9. Start caching with the WP Super Cache plug-in
    10. WP-Super Cache turns your blog into a bunch of HTML files
      1. ☑ Caching
    11. Don’t forget about your database
      1. Fight post revision bloat
      2. ☑ Database optimization
    12. Check performance issues with YSlow
    13. So much for being class valedictorian...
    14. Content Delivery Networks give your web server a break
    15. Float around in the Amazon cloud
    16. Amazon CloudFront CDN
    17. Link Amazon S3 and CloudFront to complete the CDN
    18. Distribute your site’s files
    19. Using the CDN in WordPress
      1. ☑ Reduce server requests
      2. ☑ The web server(s)
    20. Your Theme Toolbox
  21. appendix: leftovers The Top Ten Things (we didn’t cover)
    1. 1 Managing comments
    2. 2 Migrating from WordPress.com
    3. 3 Theme Library
    4. 4 Theme Editor
    5. 5 WordPress MU (multi-user)
    6. 6 BuddyPress social networking plug-in
    7. 7 PHP
      1. homepage.php template file
    8. 8 Cloud Hosting
    9. 9 Mobile WordPress
    10. 10 Search engine optimization (SEO)
      1. Quick and dirty SEO checklist
  22. Index

Product information

  • Title: Head First WordPress
  • Author(s): Jeff Siarto
  • Release date: July 2010
  • Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
  • ISBN: 9780596806286