WordPress For Dummies

Lisa Sabin-Wilson is cofounder of WebDevStudios, one of the largest WordPress design and development agencies in the world. She is a regular public speaker at national events on topics such as WordPress, development, design, CSS, and social media.

Foreword xiii

Introduction 1

About This Book 2

Foolish Assumptions 2

Icons Used in This Book 3

Beyond the Book 4

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 8

Getting set up the fast and easy way 9

Extending WordPress’s capabilities 9

Taking part in the community 11

Choosing a WordPress Platform 12

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 19

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 Your WordPress 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 46

Editing files via SFTP 47

Changing file permissions 48

Installing WordPress 50

Exploring Preinstalled WordPress 51

Installing WordPress manually 53

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 65

Logging In to the Dashboard 66

Navigating the Dashboard 67

Welcome to WordPress! 69

Site Health 70

At a Glance 71

Activity 72

Quick Draft 73

WordPress Events and News 73

Arranging the Dashboard to Your Tastes 74

Finding Inline Documentation and Help 76

Setting Options in the Dashboard 78

Configuring the Settings 79

General 79

Writing 83

Reading 85

Discussion 86

Media 93

Permalinks 94

Privacy 95

Creating Your Personal Profile 97

Setting Your Site’s Format 100

Posts 100

Media 101

Pages 101

Comments 102

Appearance 102

Plugins 104

Users 104

Tools 105

Chapter 5: Establishing Your Publishing Routine 107

Staying on Topic with Categories 107

Changing the name of a category 108

Creating new categories and deleting others 111

Examining a Post’s Address: Permalinks 113

Making your post links pretty 114

Customizing your permalinks 115

Making sure that your permalinks work with your server 117

Discovering the Many WordPress RSS Options 119

Writing Your First Entry 120

Using the Block Editor 122

Discovering available blocks 123

Inserting new blocks 131

Configuring block settings 134

Refining Your Post Options 149

Publishing Your Post 153

Being Your Own Editor 154

Look Who’s Talking on Your Site 155

Managing comments and trackbacks 155

Moderating comments and trackbacks 157

Tackling spam with Akismet 158

Part 3: Flexing and Extending WordPress 159

Chapter 6: Media Management: Images, Audio, and Video 161

Inserting Images into Your Content 162

Uploading an image from your computer 163

Inserting an image from the Media Library 165

Using the Columns Block to Insert Multiple Images in a Row 166

Inserting a Cover Image into a Post 169

Inserting a Photo Gallery 174

Inserting Video Files into Your Posts 179

Adding a link to a video from the web 180

Adding video from your computer 181

Adding video using the Embed block 185

Inserting Audio Files into Your Blog Posts 189

Inserting Audio Using the Embed Block 191

Podcasting with WordPress 192

Chapter 7: Making the Most of WordPress Plugins 195

Finding Out What Plugins Are 196

Extending WordPress with plugins 197

Distinguishing between plugins and themes 197

Exploring the Plugins Page 199

Identifying Core Plugins 202

Incorporating Akismet 202

Saying Hello Dolly 206

Discovering the one-click plugin update 207

Using Plugins: Just the Basics 210

Installing Plugins Manually 211

Finding and downloading the files 212

Reading the instructions 214

Uploading and Activating Plugins 215

Uploading a new plugin 215

Activating a plugin 216

Setting Plugin Options 217

Uninstalling Plugins 218

Understanding the Open-Source Environment 219

Finding Plugins Beyond WordPress.org 220

Comparing Free and Commercial Plugins 222

Chapter 8: Finding and Installing WordPress Themes 225

Getting Started with Free Themes 226

Finding free themes 227

Avoiding unsafe themes 227

Previewing themes on the Themes page 230

Installing a Theme 231

Browsing the free themes 233

Previewing and activating a theme 235

Exploring Premium Theme Options 237

Examining the Default Theme: Twenty Twenty 241

Exploring the layout and structure 242

Customizing the site identity 244

Customizing colors 247

Including custom navigation menus 248

Enhancing Your Theme with Widgets 249

Adding widgets to your website 250

Using the Text widget 252

Using the RSS widget 253

Part 4: Customizing WordPress 257

Chapter 9: Understanding Themes and Templates 259

Using WordPress Themes: The Basics 260

Understanding theme structure 261

Connecting templates 263

Contemplating the Structure of a WordPress Website 263

Examining the Anatomy of a Template Tag 265

Getting Familiar with the Four Main Templates 266

The Header template 266

The Main Index template 271

The Sidebar template 275

The Footer template 276

Other templates 276

Putting a Theme Together 277

Connecting the templates 277

Using additional stylesheets 287

Customizing Your Posts with Template Tags 287

Using Tags with Parameters for Sidebars 287

The calendar 289

List pages 289

Post archives 292

Categories 293

Getting widgetized 295

Chapter 10: Tweaking WordPress Themes 297

Styling with CSS: The Basics 298

CSS selectors 299

Classes and IDs 299

CSS properties and values 301

Changing the Background Graphics with CSS 301

Uploading an image for background use 304

Positioning, repeating, and attaching images 304

Using Your Own Header Image 306

Customizing Colors in Twenty Twenty 308

Creating Custom Navigation Menus 309

Building custom navigation menus 309

Displaying custom menus with widgets 314

Changing Font Family, Color, and Size 315

Changing font color 316

Changing font size 317

Adding borders 318

Understanding Basic HTML Techniques 318

Inserting images 320

Inserting hyperlinks 320

Inserting lists 321

Chapter 11: Understanding Parent and Child Themes 325

Customizing Theme Style with Child Themes 326

Loading a parent theme’s style 328

Customizing the parent theme’s styling 330

Using images in child theme designs 330

Modifying Theme Structure with Child Themes 334

Overriding parent template files 335

Adding new template files 336

Removing template files 337

Modifying the functions.php file 337

Preparing a Parent Theme 339

Chapter 12: WordPress As a Content Management System 341

Creating Different Page Views Using WordPress Templates 342

Uploading the template 343

Assigning the template to a static page 345

Creating a Template for Each Post Category 346

Using Sidebar Templates 349

Creating Custom Styles for Sticky, Category, and Tag Posts 350

Working with Custom Post Types 353

Adding Support for Taxonomies 360

Adding Support for Post Thumbnails 361

Adding the post thumbnails to a theme 362

Adding custom image sizes for post thumbnails 364

Optimizing Your WordPress Site 365

Planting keywords on your website 366

Optimizing your post titles for search engine success 366

Writing content with readers in mind 367

Creating categories that attract search engines 367

Using the tag for images 368

Chapter 13: Hosting Multiple Sites with WordPress 371

Deciding When to Use the Multisite Feature 372

Understanding the Difference between Sites and Blogs 374

Considering Web-Hosting Services 374

Enabling the WordPress Network Feature 376

DNS 377

Apache mod_rewrite 378

Virtual host 379

PHP 381

Installing the Network on Your Site 381

Exploring the Network Admin Dashboard Menu 383

Managing Your Network 386

Settings 386

Sites 392

Users 395

Themes 399

Plugins 400

Stopping Spam Signups and Splogs 401

Chapter 14: Upgrading, Backing Up, and Migrating 403

Getting Notified of an Available Upgrade 404

Backing Up Your Database 406

Upgrading WordPress Automatically 407

Upgrading WordPress Manually 408

Migrating Your Existing Site to WordPress 411

Movin’ on up 411

Preparing for the big move 412

Converting templates 413

Moving your website to WordPress 414

Importing from Blogger 415

Importing from LiveJournal 417

Importing from Movable Type and TypePad 418

Importing from Tumblr 420

Importing from WordPress 422

Importing from an RSS feed 422

Finding other import resources 423

Moving Your Website to a Different Host 424

Creating a backup and moving manually 425

Using a plugin to back up and move to a new host 426

Part 5: The Part of Tens 427

Chapter 15: Ten Popular WordPress Plugins 429

Custom Post Type UI 429

Jetpack 430

Limit Login Attempts Reloaded 431

Cookie Notice for GDPR & CCPA 432

Yoast SEO 433

BackupBuddy 433

WP Super Cache 434

WooCommerce 434

Google XML Sitemaps 435

Sucuri Security 436

Chapter 16: Ten Free WordPress Themes 437

Hybrid Core 438

Hestia 438

Responsive 439

Ashe 440

Prefer Blog 440

BlackBird 441

Storefront 442

Sinatra 443

Nisarg 444

Optics 444

Index 447