WordPress For Dummies

Lisa Sabin-Wilson is co-founder of WebDevStudios (https://webdevstudios.com), one of the largest WordPress design and development agencies in the world. Lisa is a regular public speaker at national events on topics such as WordPress, development, design, CSS, and social media. You can connect with Lisa on Twitter @LisaSabinWilson.

Foreword xiii


Introduction 1


About This Book 2


Foolish Assumptions 2


Icons Used in This Book 3


Beyond the Book 3


Where to Go from Here 4


Part 1: Introducing WordPress 5


Chapter 1: What WordPress Can Do for You 7


Discovering the Benefits of WordPress 7


Getting set up the fast and easy way 8


Extending WordPress’s capabilities 9


Taking part in the community 10


Choosing a WordPress Platform 11


Choosing the hosted version from WordPress.com 13


Self-hosting with WordPress.org 14


Chapter 2: WordPress Basics 17


Shining the Spotlight on WordPress 17


Dipping Into WordPress Technologies 19


Archiving your publishing history 20


Interacting with your readers through comments 21


Feeding your readers 22


Tracking back 23


Dealing with comment and trackback spam 24


Using WordPress as a Content Management System 25


Exploring the differences between a website and a blog 25


Viewing examples of blogs and websites 26


Moving On to the Business of Publishing 27


Part 2: Setting Up WordPress 29


Chapter 3: Setting Up Blogging Base Camp 31


Establishing Your Domain 32


Understanding domain name extensions 32


Considering the cost of a domain name 33


Registering your domain name 33


Finding a Home for Your Website 34


Getting help with hosting WordPress 35


Dealing with disk space and bandwidth 36


Understanding Secure File Transfer Concepts 38


Setting up SFTP on your hosting account 39


Connecting to the web server via SFTP 42


Transferring files from point A to point B 45


Editing files via SFTP 46


Changing file permissions 48


Installing WordPress 50


Exploring Preinstalled WordPress 50


Installing WordPress manually 52


Setting up the MySQL database 53


Uploading the WordPress files 55


Last step: Running the installation script 57


Chapter 4: Understanding the WordPress.org Dashboard 63


Logging In to the Dashboard 64


Navigating the Dashboard 65


Welcome to WordPress! 66


At a Glance 67


Activity 68


Quick Draft 69


WordPress News 70


Arranging the Dashboard to Your Tastes 70


Finding Inline Documentation and Help 72


Setting Options in the Dashboard 75


Configuring the Settings 75


General 75


Writing 79


Reading 81


Discussion 82


Media 88


Permalinks 90


Creating Your Personal Profile 90


Setting Your Site’s Format 93


Posts 93


Media 94


Pages 94


Comments 95


Appearance 95


Plugins 96


Users 97


Tools 97


Chapter 5: Establishing Your Publishing Routine 99


Staying on Topic with Categories 99


Changing the name of a category 100


Creating new categories and deleting others 103


Examining a Post’s Address: Permalinks 105


Making your post links pretty 106


Customizing your permalinks 107


Making sure that your permalinks work with your server 109


Discovering the Many WordPress RSS Options 111


Writing Your First Entry 112


Composing your blog post 112


Dressing up your posts with images, video, and audio 116


Refining your post options 116


Publishing your post 119


Editing your post 121


Look Who’s Talking on Your Site 122


Managing comments and trackbacks 122


Moderating comments and trackbacks 124


Tackling spam with Akismet 124


Part 3: Flexing and Extending WordPress 127


Chapter 6: Media Management: Images, Audio, and Video 129


Inserting Images into Your Content 130


Aligning your images 134


Inserting a photo gallery 135


Inserting Video Files into Your Posts 140


Inserting Audio Files into Your Posts 142


Keeping Media Files Organized 143


Chapter 7: Making the Most of WordPress Plugins 147


Finding Out What Plugins Are 148


Extending WordPress with plugins 149


Distinguishing between plugins and themes 149


Exploring the Plugins Page 151


Identifying Core Plugins 153


Incorporating Akismet 154


Saying Hello Dolly 157


Discovering the one-click plugin update 158


Using Plugins: Just the Basics 160


Installing Plugins Manually 162


Finding and downloading the files 162


Reading the instructions 165


Uploading and Activating Plugins 165


Uploading a new plugin 166


Activating a plugin 166


Setting Plugin Options 168


Uninstalling Plugins 169


Understanding the Open-Source Environment 170


Finding Plugins Outside the Plugins Page on the WordPress.org Website 171


Comparing Free and Commercial Plugins 173


Chapter 8: Finding and Installing WordPress Themes 175


Getting Started with Free Themes 175


Finding free themes 177


Avoiding unsafe themes 177


Previewing themes in the Theme Directory 180


Installing a Theme 181


Browsing the free themes 183


Previewing and activating a theme 184


Exploring Premium Theme Options 186


Examining the Default Theme: Twenty Seventeen 191


Exploring the layout and structure 191


Customizing the header media 194


Customizing the colors 197


Including custom navigation menus 198


Enhancing Your Theme with Widgets 199


Adding widgets to your sidebar 199


Using the Text widget 202


Using the RSS widget 203


Part 4: Customizing WordPress 207


Chapter 9: Understanding Themes and Templates 209


Using WordPress Themes: The Basics 210


Understanding theme structure 210


Connecting templates 212


Contemplating the Structure of a WordPress Website 213


Examining the Anatomy of a Template Tag 215


Getting Familiar with the Four Main Templates 216


The Header template 216


The Main Index template 221


The Sidebar template 225


The Footer template 226


Other templates 226


Putting a Theme Together 227


Connecting the templates 228


Using additional stylesheets 237


Customizing Your Posts with Template Tags 238


Using Tags with Parameters for Sidebars 238


The calendar 240


List pages 240


Post archives 242


Categories 244


Getting widgetized 245


Chapter 10: Tweaking WordPress Themes 249


Styling with CSS: The Basics 250


CSS selectors 250


Classes and IDs 251


CSS properties and values 253


Changing the Background Graphics with CSS 253


Uploading an image for background use 255


Positioning, repeating, and attaching images 256


Using Your Own Header Image 258


Customizing Colors in Twenty Seventeen 260


Creating Custom Navigation Menus 261


Adding the Custom Menu feature to your theme 262


Building custom navigation menus 263


Displaying custom menus with widgets 268


Changing Font Family, Color, and Size 269


Changing font color 270


Changing font size 270


Adding borders 271


Understanding Basic HTML Techniques 272


Inserting images 273


Inserting hyperlinks 274


Inserting lists 274


Chapter 11: Understanding Parent and Child Themes 277


Customizing Theme Style with Child Themes 278


Loading a parent theme’s style 280


Customizing the parent theme’s styling 282


Using images in child theme designs 283


Modifying Theme Structure with Child Themes 287


Overriding parent template files 287


Adding new template files 288


Removing template files 289


Modifying the functions.php file 289


Preparing a Parent Theme 291


Chapter 12: WordPress As a Content Management System 293


Creating Different Page Views Using WordPress Templates 294


Uploading the template 295


Assigning the template to a static page 296


Creating a Template for Each Post Category 298


Using Sidebar Templates 301


Creating Custom Styles for Sticky, Category, and Tag Posts 302


Working with Custom Post Types 304


Adding Support for Post Formats 312


Adding post formats to a theme 313


Using template tags for post formats 314


Adding Support for Post Thumbnails 318


Adding the post thumbnails to a theme 319


Adding custom image sizes for post thumbnails 320


Exploring the Custom Fields Interface 321


Adding Custom Fields to your template file 323


Entering the code in the template file 324


Getting WordPress to check for your Custom Field 326


Exploring different uses for Custom Fields 327


Optimizing Your WordPress Site 328


Planting keywords on your website 329


Optimizing your post titles for search engine success 330


Writing content with readers in mind 330


Creating categories that attract search engines 331


Using the tag for images 332


Chapter 13: Hosting Multiple Sites with WordPress 333


Deciding When to Use the Multisite Feature 334


Understanding the Difference between Sites and Blogs 335


Considering Web-Hosting Services 336


Enabling the WordPress Network Feature 338


DNS 339


Apache mod_rewrite 340


Virtual host 340


PHP 341


Installing the Network on Your Site 341


Exploring the Network Admin Dashboard Menu 343


Managing Your Network 345


Settings 346


Sites 351


Users 355


Themes 357


Plugins 358


Updates 359


Stopping Spam Signups and Splogs 359


Diverting sploggers with settings and code 359


Preventing spam with plugins 360


Chapter 14: Upgrading, Backing Up, and Migrating 361


Getting Notified of an Available Upgrade 362


Backing Up Your Database 364


Upgrading WordPress Automatically 365


Upgrading WordPress Manually 366


Migrating Your Existing Site to WordPress 369


Movin’ on up 369


Preparing for the big move 370


Converting templates 371


Moving your website to WordPress 372


Importing from Blogger 373


Importing from LiveJournal 375


Importing from Movable Type and TypePad 376


Importing from Tumblr 378


Importing from WordPress 380


Importing from an RSS feed 380


Finding other import resources 381


Moving Your Website to a Different Host 382


Creating a backup and moving manually 383


Using a plugin to back up and move to a new host 384


Part 5: The Part of Tens 385


Chapter 15: Ten Popular WordPress Plugins 387


AppPresser 387


Jetpack 388


Subscribe to Comments 389


Facebook 390


All in One SEO Pack 391


BackupBuddy 391


WP Super Cache 392


WooCommerce 392


Google XML Sitemaps 393


Sucuri Security 394


Chapter 16: Ten Free WordPress Themes 395


Hybrid Core 396


Hestia 396


Responsive 398


P2 398


Annotum Base 399


Blackbird 399


iTheme2 400


Esquire 401


Nisarg 401


Optics 402


Index 403