www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info WordPress Matthew MacDonald Beijing | Cambridge | Farnham | Köln | Sebastopol | Tokyo The book that should have been in the box® www.it-ebooks.info WordPress: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald Copyright © 2013 Matthew MacDonald. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472. O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Online editions are also available for most titles ( http://my.safaribooksonline.com ). For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: (800) 998-9938 or corporate@oreilly.com . October 2012: First Edition. Revision History for the First Edition: 2012-10-08 First release See http://oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp?isbn=0636920021391 for release details. The Missing Manual is a registered trademark of O’Reilly Media, Inc. The Missing Manual logo, and “The book that should have been in the box” are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and O’Reilly Media is aware of a trademark claim, the designations are capitalized. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained in it. ISBN: 978-1-449-30984-8 [LSI] www.it-ebooks.info III Contents The Missing Credits vii Introduction 1 Part One: Starting Out with WordPress CHAPTER 1: The WordPress Landscape 11 How WordPress Works 12 What You Can Build with WordPress 15 WordPress Hosting 25 CHAPTER 2: Signing Up with WordPress.com 31 Choosing a Web Address 32 Creating Your WordPress.com Account 33 The WordPress.com Community 46 CHAPTER 3: Installing WordPress on Your Web Host 51 Preparing for WordPress. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Installing WordPress with an Autoinstaller 57 Installing WordPress by Hand 65 Maintaining Your Site 75 Part Two: Building a WordPress Blog CHAPTER 4: Creating Posts 85 Introducing the Dashboard 85 Adding Your First Post 93 Organizing Your Posts 105 How to Get High-Quality URLs 115 Dashboard Tricks to Save Time and Eort 122 CHAPTER 5: Choosing and Polishing Your WordPress Theme 131 How Themes Work 132 Tweaking Your Theme 134 Customizing Your Widgets 141 Choosing a New Theme 156 www.it-ebooks.info CONTENTS IV CHAPTER 6: Jazzing Up Your Posts 167 Making Fancier Posts 168 Using Pictures 178 The Media Library 188 Showing Part of a Post 192 CHAPTER 7: Adding Pages and Menus 199 Creating Pages 200 Viewing Pages 203 Custom Menus 210 Changing Your Home Page 220 CHAPTER 8: Comments: Letting Your Readers Talk Back 229 Allowing or Forbidding Comments 230 The Life Cycle of a Comment 232 The Ongoing Conversation 242 Making Comments More Personal 251 Stamping Out Comment Spam 260 Part Three: Supercharging Your Blog CHAPTER 9: Getting New Features with Plug-Ins 273 Managing Plug-Ins 274 The Jetpack Plug-In 284 Adding Mobile Support 293 Backing Up a WordPress Site 299 Better Performance with Caching 306 CHAPTER 10: Adding Picture Galleries, Video, and Music 311 Understanding Embeds and Shortcodes 311 Showing Groups of Pictures 316 Embedding a Video Window 334 Playing Audio Files 343 CHAPTER 11: Collaborating with Multiple Authors 353 Adding Users to Your Site 353 Working with Authors 361 Building a Private Community 370 Creating a Network of Sites 375 www.it-ebooks.info CONTENTS V CHAPTER 12: Attracting a Crowd 389 Encouraging Your Readers to Share 390 Keeping Readers in the Loop 401 Notifying Readers by Using Feeds 408 Search Engine Optimization 411 WordPress Site Statistics 419 Part Four: From Blog to Website CHAPTER 13: Editing Themes: The Key to Customizing Your Site 427 The Goal: More Flexible Blogs and Sites 428 Taking Control of Your Theme 431 Protecting Yourself with a Child Theme 435 Editing the Styles in Your Theme 439 Editing the Code in Your Theme 452 CHAPTER 14: Building an Advanced WordPress Site 471 Planning Your Site 472 Creating Custom Category Pages 478 Building a Better Home Page 486 From Post to Product Page 493 Adding E-Commerce 502 Part Five: Appendixes APPENDIX A: Migrating from WordPress.com 513 Before You Begin 514 Transferring Your Data 515 Cleaning Up Your New Site 520 APPENDIX B: Useful Websites 523 Chapter Links. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .523 Index 531 www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info THE MISSING CREDITS VII The Missing Credits About the Author Matthew MacDonald is a science and technology writer with well over a dozen books to his name. Web novices can tiptoe out onto the Internet with him in Creating a Website: The Miss- ing Manual . HTML fans can learn about the cutting edge of web design in HTML5: The Missing Manual . And human beings of all description can discover just how strange they really are in the quirky handbooks Your Brain: The Missing Manual and Your Body: The Missing Manual . About the Creative Team Peter McKie (editor) graduated from Boston University’s School of Journalism and lives in New York City. He archives material chronicling the history of his summer beach community. Email: pmckie@oreilly.com . Holly Bauer (production editor) lives in Ye Olde Cambridge, MA, where she is an avid home cook, prolific DIYer, and mid-century modern furniture design enthusiast. Email: holly@oreilly.com . Ron Strauss (indexer) specializes in the indexing of information technology publica- tions of all kinds. Ron is also an accomplished classical violist and lives in northern C alifornia with his wife and fellow indexer, Annie, and his miniature pinscher, Kanga. Email: rstrauss@mchsi.com . Nancy Reinhardt (proofreader) lives in the Midwest, where she enjoys summer weekends at the lake, boating, swimming, and reading voraciously. Nan is not only a freelance copyeditor and proofreader, but she’s also a published romance novelist. Check out her work at www.nanreinhardt.com . Email: nanleigh1@gmail.com . Sallie Goetsch (technical reviewer) (rhymes with ‘sketch’) hand-coded her first web- site in HTML in 1995, but hasn’t looked back since discovering WordPress in 2005. S he works as an independent consultant and organizes the East Bay WordPress Meetup in Oakland, California. You can reach her at www.wpfangirl.com . Christian Michael (technical reviewer) is an experienced public communicator for the US Air Force and owner of Scroll Media. He performs professional voice work and is currently writing his sixth novel, in addition to authoring a weeknight blog at www.Rechabite.com . Email: cmichael.public@gmail.com . www.it-ebooks.info THE MISSING CREDITS VIII Acknowledgments No author could complete a book without a small army of helpful individuals. I’m deeply indebted to the whole Missing Manual team, including my editor Peter McKie, expert tech reviewers Sallie Goetsch and Christian Michael, and numerous others who’ve toiled behind the scenes indexing pages, drawing figures, and proofreading the final copy. Finally, for the parts of my life that exist outside this book, I’d like to thank all my family members. They include my parents Nora and Paul, my extended parents Razia and Hamid, my wife Faria, and my daughters, Maya and Brenna. Thanks everyone! The Missing Manual Series Missing Manuals are witty, superbly written guides to computer products that don’t come with printed manuals (which is just about all of them). Each book features a handcrafted index and cross-references to specific pages (not just chapters). Recent and upcoming titles include: Access 2010: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald Adobe Edge Preview 7: The Missing Manual by Chris Grover Buying a Home: The Missing Manual by Nancy Conner Creating a Website: The Missing Manual, Third Edition, by Matthew MacDonald CSS: The Missing Manual, Second Edition, by David Sawyer McFarland David Pogue’s Digital Photography: The Missing Manual by David Pogue Dreamweaver CS6: The Missing Manual by David Sawyer McFarland Droid 2: The Missing Manual by Preston Gralla Droid X2: The Missing Manual by Preston Gralla Excel 2010: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald FileMaker Pro 12: The Missing Manual by Susan Prosser and Stuart Gripman Flash CS6: The Missing Manual by Chris Grover Galaxy S II: The Missing Manual by Preston Gralla Galaxy Tab: The Missing Manual by Preston Gralla Google+: The Missing Manual by Kevin Purdy HTML5: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald iMovie ’11 & iDVD: The Missing Manual by David Pogue and Aaron Miller iPad: The Missing Manual, Fourth Edition by J.D. Biersdorfer iPhone: The Missing Manual, Fifth Edition by David Pogue www.it-ebooks.info [...]... CS6: The Missing Manual by Lesa Snider Photoshop Elements 10: The Missing Manual by Barbara Brundage PHP & MySQL: The Missing Manual by Brett McLaughlin QuickBooks 2012: The Missing Manual by Bonnie Biafore Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Lion Edition by David Pogue Windows 7: The Missing Manual by David Pogue Windows 8: The Missing Manual by David Pogue Your Body: The Missing Manual by Matthew... Microsoft Project 2010: The Missing Manual by Bonnie Biafore Motorola Xoom: The Missing Manual by Preston Gralla Netbooks: The Missing Manual by J.D Biersdorfer NOOK Tablet: The Missing Manual by Preston Gralla Office 2010: The Missing Manual by Nancy Connor, Chris Grover, and Matthew MacDonald Office 2011 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual by Chris Grover Personal Investing: The Missing Manual by Bonnie Biafore... Development: The Missing Manual by Craig Hockenberry iPhoto ’11: The Missing Manual by David Pogue and Lesa Snider iPod: The Missing Manual, Tenth Edition by J.D Biersdorfer and David Pogue JavaScript & jQuery: The Missing Manual, Second Edition by David Sawyer McFarland Kindle Fire: The Missing Manual by Peter Meyers Living Green: The Missing Manual by Nancy Conner Mac OS X Mountain Lion: The Missing Manual. .. Brain: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald Your Money: The Missing Manual by J.D Roth For a full list of all Missing Manuals in print, go to www.missingmanuals.com/library html The Missing Credits www.it-ebooks.info ix www.it-ebooks.info I Introduction Throughout history, people have searched for new places to vent their opinions, sell their products, and just chat it up The World Wide Web is the. .. move it to another web host to get more 4 WordPress: The Missing Manual www.it-ebooks.info features The second (Appendix B) lists some useful web links culled from the chapters in this book Don't worry—you don't need to type these into your browser by hand It's all waiting for you on the Missing CD page for this book at http://missingmanuals.com/cds/wpmm/ About the Online Resources About the Online Resources... assembles the relevant content For example, if a visitor searches a blog for the words "tripe soup," WordPress needs to find all the appropriate posts, stitch them together into a web page, and then send the result back to the web browser More impressively, WordPress lets visitors write comments and leave other types of feedback, all of which become part of the site's ongoing conversation WordPress Behind the. .. WordPress: The Missing Manual www.it-ebooks.info With WordPress, these problems disappear To get new formatting, you tweak the style settings, either using WordPress' s administrative hub (called the dashboard), or by editing the styles by hand To get the calorie counter, you simply drop the corresponding widget (and yes, WordPress does have a a calorie-counting widget plug-in) into the current theme's layout... to the dashboard in WordPress, click the Appearance menu item, and then select the Themes entry underneath.” Our shorthand system keep things more snappy than these long, drawn-out instructions About WordPress This book provides a thorough soup-to-nuts look at WordPress You'll learn everything you need to know, including how to create, manage, maintain, and extend a WordPress site 2 WordPress: The Missing. .. with WordPress is a slam-dunk After all, WordPress was created as a blogging tool (in 2003), and has since exploded into the most popular blogging software on the planet In fact, if you're planning to create a blog, there's really no good reason not to use WordPress Although there are several other blogging platforms out there, and they all work reasonably well, none of them has the near-fanatical WordPress. .. WordPress Behind the Scenes In a very real sense, WordPress is the brain of your website When someone visits a WordPress- powered site, the web server fires up the WordPress software and tells it to get busy A blink of an eye later, a new web page is delivered to your visitor Two crucial ingredients allow WordPress to work the way it does: 12 WordPress: The Missing Manual www.it-ebooks.info • A database This . Pogue Windows 8: The Missing Manual by David Pogue Your Body: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald Your Brain: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald Your Money: The Missing Manual by J.D McFarland Droid 2: The Missing Manual by Preston Gralla Droid X2: The Missing Manual by Preston Gralla Excel 2010: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald FileMaker Pro 12: The Missing Manual by. CS6: The Missing Manual by Chris Grover Galaxy S II: The Missing Manual by Preston Gralla Galaxy Tab: The Missing Manual by Preston Gralla Google+: The Missing Manual by Kevin Purdy HTML5: The