WordPress For Dummies

Introduction

It was 2003 when I discovered the WordPress blogging software. Way back then (and in Internet years, that’s actually quite a lot of time), I used Movable Type as my blogging platform. My friend Chelle introduced me to the WordPress software. Try it, she said. You’ll really like it.

As a creature of habit, I felt reluctant to make the change. But I haven’t looked back. I’ve been with WordPress ever since.

WordPress started as a tool for blogging. Authors, students, parents, business owners, academics, journalists, hobbyists — you name it — use blogs as a matter of course. Over the past decade, WordPress has emerged as the premier content management system (CMS) available on the Internet. WordPress software currently powers 30 percent of the websites you see.

Today, WordPress is much more than a blogging tool. Individuals, organizations, and corporations are using WordPress to build their entire web presence. WordPress has grown into a valuable solution for everything from selling products on the Internet to running membership sites and blogging. Pretty much anything you think you can do with your website, you can accomplish with WordPress.

To a brand-new user, some aspects of WordPress can be a little bit intimidating. After you start using it, however, you begin to realize how intuitive, friendly, and extensible the software is.

This book presents an insightful look at WordPress. In the book, I cover managing and maintaining your WordPress-powered website through the use of plugins and themes, as well as using the intuitive WordPress Dashboard to manage your content. If you’re interested in taking a detailed look at the website-building tool provided by WordPress, you happen to have just the right book in your hands.

About This Book

This book covers all the important aspects of WordPress that new users need to know to use the software for their own websites. I cover the software package available at https://wordpress.org by highlighting important topics, such as these:

Installing and setting up the software

Navigating the WordPress Dashboard

Finding and installing free themes to use on your WordPress website

Using basic coding to design your own WordPress theme or modify the one you’re using

Installing, activating, and managing WordPress plugins

Choosing to use the multiple-site WordPress Network option to host a network of websites in your domain

Migrating your existing website to WordPress (if you’re using a different platform, such as Drupal, Movable Type, or Expression Engine)

With WordPress, you can truly tailor a website to your own tastes and needs. Some of them are packaged with the WordPress software; others are third-party plugins and add-ons created by members of the WordPress user community. You need to invest only a little research, knowledge, and time to put together a site that suits your needs and gives your readers an exciting experience that keeps them coming back for more.

Foolish Assumptions

I’ll never know what assumptions you’ve made about me at this point, but I can tell you a few things that I already assume about you:

You know what a computer is. You can turn it on, and you understand that if you spill coffee on your keyboard, you’ll have to run out and get a replacement.

You understand how to connect to the Internet and know the basics of using a web browser to surf websites.

You have a basic understanding of what websites and blogs are, and you’re interested in using WordPress to start your own. Or you already have a website, are already using WordPress, and want to understand the program better so that you can do more cool stuff and stop bugging your geeky best friend whenever you have a question about something. You already have a website on another platform and want to move your website to WordPress.

You know what email is. You know what an email address is. You actually have an email address, and you send and receive email on a semiregular basis.

Icons Used in This Book

Icons emphasize a point to remember, a danger to be aware of, or information that I think you may find helpful. Those points are illustrated as such:

tip Tips are little bits of information that you may find useful.

warning I use this icon to point out dangerous situations.

technicalstuff All geeky stuff goes here. I don’t use this icon very often, but when I do, you’ll know that you’re about to encounter technical mumbo-jumbo.

remember When you see this icon, read the text next to it two or three times to brand it into your brain so that you remember whatever it is that I think you need to remember.

Beyond the Book

I’ve put a ton of information between the covers of this book, but at www.dummies.com you can find a Cheat Sheet that lists

Where to find WordPress support online

How to navigate the WordPress Dashboard

How to locate a reliable web-hosting provider

When you arrive at www.dummies.com, type the book's title in the Search field to find the Cheat Sheet.

Where to Go from Here

This book is a veritable smorgasbord of WordPress information, ideas, concepts, tools, resources, and instruction. Some parts of the book may apply directly to what you want to do with your WordPress blog. Other parts may deal with topics that you’re only mildly curious about, so feel free to skim (or skip) those pages.

If you already have WordPress installed on your web server, for example, you can skip Chapter 3. If you aren’t interested in digging into the code of a WordPress template and don’t want to find out how to apply CSS or HTML to enhance your design, you can skip Chapters 9 through 12. If you have no interest in running more than one website with WordPress, you can skip Chapter 13.

I don’t intend for you to read this book from cover to cover (unless you’re my mother — then I won’t forgive you if you don’t). Rather, scan the table of contents and the index to find the information you need.

Long story short: Take what you need, and leave the rest.

Part 1

Introducing WordPress

IN THIS PART…

Explore all WordPress has to offer.

Discover the basic concepts about publishing a website with WordPress.

Understand the different versions of WordPress and choose the right one for you.

Get ready to use WordPress for your online publishing.

Chapter 1

What WordPress Can Do for You

IN THIS CHAPTER

check Seeing how WordPress can benefit you

check Participating in the WordPress community

check Understanding the different versions of WordPress

In a world in which technology advances in the blink of an eye, WordPress really does make building websites easy — and free! How else can you get your content out to a potential audience of millions worldwide and spend exactly nothing? There may be no such thing as a free lunch in this world, but you can bet your bottom dollar that there are free websites and blogs. WordPress serves them all up in one nifty package.

The software’s free price tag, its ease of use, and the speed at which you can get your website up and running are great reasons to use WordPress to power your personal blog or business website. An even greater reason is the incredibly supportive and passionate WordPress community. In this chapter, I introduce you to the WordPress software so that you can begin to discover how effective it is as a tool for creating your website.

Discovering the Benefits of WordPress

I work with first-time website owners all the time — folks who are new to the idea of publishing content on the Internet. One of the questions I’m most frequently asked is How can I run a website? I don’t even know how to code or create websites.

Enter WordPress. You no longer need to worry about knowing the code because the WordPress software does the code part for you. When you log in to your website, you have to do only two simple things to publish your thoughts and ideas:

Write your content.

Click a button to publish your content.

That’s it!

WordPress offers the following competitive advantages as the most popular content management tool on the market:

Diverse options: Two versions of WordPress are available to suit nearly every type of website owner:

WordPress.com: A hosted turnkey solution; primarily used for blogging

WordPress.org: A self-hosted version to install on the web server of your choice; used for building blogs and websites

I go into detail about each of these versions later in this chapter, in the "Choosing a WordPress Platform" section.

Ease of use: WordPress setup is quick, and the software is easy to use.

Extensibility: WordPress is extremely extensible, meaning that you can easily obtain plugins and tools that let you customize it to suit your purposes.

Strong community of users: WordPress has a large and loyal members-helping-members community via public support forums, mailing lists, and websites geared to the use of WordPress.

The following sections fill in a few details about these features and point you to places in the book where you can find out more about them.

Getting set up the fast and easy way

WordPress is one of the only platforms that can brag about a five-minute installation — and stand behind it! Both versions of WordPress take you approximately the same amount of time to sign up.

remember Mind you, five minutes is an approximate installation time. It doesn’t include the time required to obtain domain registration and web-hosting services or to set up the options in the Dashboard. (You can find information on web-hosting services in Chapter 3.)

When you complete the installation, however, the world of WordPress awaits you. The Dashboard is well organized and easy on the eyes. Everything is clear and logical, making it easy for even a first-time user to see where to go to manage settings and options.

The WordPress software surely has enough meat on it to keep the most experienced developer busy and happy. At the same time, however, it’s friendly enough to make a novice user giddy about how easy it is to get started. Each time you use WordPress, you can find out something exciting and new.

Extending WordPress’s capabilities

I’ve found that the most exciting and fun part of running a WordPress website is exploring the flexibility of the software. Hundreds of plugins and themes (designs) are available to let you create a website that functions the way you need it to.

tip If you think of your website as a vacuum cleaner, plugins are the attachments. The attachments don’t function alone. When you add them to your vacuum cleaner, however, you add to the functionality of your vacuum, possibly improving its performance.

All WordPress websites are pretty much the same at their core, so by using plugins, you can truly individualize your website by providing additional features and tools that benefit you and your readers. When you come upon a WordPress website that has some really different and cool functions, 98 percent of the time, you can include that function on your own website by using a WordPress plugin. If you don’t know what plugin that website is using, try dropping the website owner an email or leave a comment. WordPress website owners usually are eager to share the great tools they discover.

Most plugins are available at no charge. You can find out more about WordPress plugins and where to get them in Chapter 7. Chapter 15 lists my top ten choices for popular WordPress plugins available for download.

In addition to using plugins, you can embellish your WordPress site with templates and themes. WordPress comes with a very nice default theme to get you started. Figure 1-1 shows the default Twenty Seventeen theme, created by the team from WordPress, which is displayed by default after you install and set up your site for the first time.

FIGURE 1-1: Start a new WordPress website with a theme.

The theme’s default style is minimal, with a handy application built into the preferences that allows you to change the colors and insert an image to use as a header image. (You can find more about tweaking WordPress themes in Chapters 9 through 12.)

remember The Twenty Seventeen theme (refer to Figure 1-1) includes all the basic elements that you need when starting a new WordPress site. You can extend your WordPress site in a hundred ways with plugins and themes released by members of the WordPress community, but this default theme is a nice place to start.

Using some of the thousands of plugins and themes available, you can truly manage many kinds of content on your website. WordPress isn’t just for blogging anymore (although it does still excel at it!). Although WordPress became well known as a blogging platform, you can use it to power diverse and dynamic websites that allow you to do things like develop an e-commerce site (selling products online), create a members-only site where your content is curated only for those who have registered and become members of your site, or create a large corporate business site like the one you can see in the Microsoft News Center at https://news.microsoft.com.

Using WordPress as a content management system (CMS) frees you from running only a blog on the platform. (See Chapter 12 for more about the technique of designing for WordPress as a CMS.)

Taking part in the community

Allow me to introduce you to the fiercely loyal folks who make up the user base, better known as the vast WordPress community. This band of merry ladies and gentlemen comes from all around the globe, from California to Cairo, Florida to Florence, and all points in between and beyond.

In March 2005, Matt Mullenweg of WordPress proudly proclaimed that the number of WordPress downloads had reached 900,000 — an amazing landmark in the history of the software. But the real excitement occurred in August 2006, when WordPress logged more than 1 million downloads, and in 2007, when the software had more than 3 million downloads. The number of WordPress downloads has broken the ceiling since 2007 (more than 35 million downloads by the beginning of 2017), and the number of WordPress users has climbed to tens of millions and is growing daily. WordPress is easily the most popular CMS available on the web today. It currently powers approximately 25 to 30 percent of all the websites you see on the Internet in 2017 — roughly one of every four sites you encounter on the World Wide Web.

Don’t let the sheer volume of users fool you: WordPress also has bragging rights to the most helpful community on the web. You can find users helping other users in the support forums at https://wordpress.org/support. You can also find users contributing to the very helpful WordPress Codex (a collection of how-to documents) at http://codex.wordpress.org. Finally, across the Internet, you can find multiple websites about WordPress itself, with users sharing their experiences and war stories in the hope of helping the next person who comes along.

You can subscribe to various mailing lists, too. These lists offer you the opportunity to become involved in various aspects of the WordPress community as well as in the ongoing development of the software.

Joining the WordPress community is easy: Simply start your own website by using one of the two WordPress software options. If you’re already publishing on a different platform, such as Blogger or Movable Type, WordPress enables you to easily migrate your current data from that platform to a new WordPress setup. (See Chapter 14 for information about migrating your existing website to WordPress.)

Choosing a WordPress Platform

One of the realities of running a website today is choosing among the veritable feast of software platforms to find the one that performs the way you need. You want to be sure that the platform you choose has all the options you’re looking for. WordPress is unique in that it offers two versions of its software, each designed to meet various needs:

The hosted version at WordPress.com: https://wordpress.com.

The self-installed and self-hosted version available at https://wordpress.org. (This book focuses on this version.)

Every WordPress website setup has certain features available, whether you’re using the self-hosted software from WordPress.org or the hosted version at WordPress.com. These features include (but aren’t limited to)

Quick and easy installation and setup

Full-featured publishing capability, letting you publish content to the web through an easy-to-use web-based interface

Topical archiving of your posts, using categories

Monthly archiving of your posts, with the ability to provide a listing of those archives for easy navigation through your site

Comment and trackback tools

Automatic spam protection through Akismet

Built-in gallery integration for photos and images

Media Manager for video and audio files

Great community support

Unlimited number of static pages, letting you step out of the blog box and into the sphere of running a fully functional website

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) capability (see Chapter 2) with RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0, and Atom support

Tools for importing content from other blogging systems, such as Blogger, Movable Type, and LiveJournal

Table 1-1 compares the two WordPress versions.

TABLE 1-1 Exploring the Differences between the Two Versions of WordPress

* CSS = Cascading Style Sheets

** Limited selection on WordPress.com

Choosing the hosted version from WordPress.com

WordPress.com is a free service. If downloading, installing, and using software on a web server sound like Greek to you — and like things you’d rather avoid — the WordPress folks provide a solution for you at WordPress.com.

WordPress.com is a hosted solution, which means that it has no software requirement, no downloads, and no installation or server configurations. Everything’s done for you on the back end, behind the scenes. You don’t even have to worry about how the process happens; it happens quickly, and before you know it, you’re making your first post using a WordPress.com solution.

WordPress.com has some limitations, though. You can’t install plugins or custom themes, for example, and you can’t customize the base code files. Neither are you able to sell advertising or monetize your site at all on WordPress.com unless you pay the $299 annual fee. Also, WordPress.com displays advertisements on your posts and pages to users who aren’t logged in to the WordPress.com network (https://en.support.wordpress.com/no-ads). But even with its limitations, WordPress.com is an excellent starting point if you’re brand-new to blogging and a little intimidated by the configuration requirements of the self-installed WordPress.org software.

If you don’t want or need to create a full website for your business or service and just want to create an online diary of sorts, you typically use WordPress.com, because it excels at allowing you to get a simple site up and running quickly. As I mention previously, however, if you want to use the thousands of plugins and themes available for WordPress — or if you want to customize your own theme for your website — you are limited to only a few themes on the WordPress.com-hosted service, and you are not able to install your own plugins on the service either.

The good news is this: If you ever outgrow your WordPress.com-hosted site and want to make a move to the self-hosted WordPress.org software, you can. You can even take all the content from your WordPress.com-hosted site with you and easily import it into your new setup with the WordPress.org software.

Self-hosting with WordPress.org

The self-installed version from WordPress.org that I cover in this book requires you to download the software from the WordPress website and install it on a web server. Unless you own your own web server, you need to lease one — or lease space on one.

Using a web server typically is referred to as web hosting, and unless you know someone who knows someone, hosting generally isn’t free. That being said, web hosting doesn’t cost a whole lot, either. You can usually obtain a good web-hosting service for anywhere from $5 to $20 per month, depending on your needs. (Chapter 3 gives you the important details you need to know about obtaining a web host.)

You need to make sure, however, that any web host you choose to work with has the required software installed on the web server. Currently, the minimum software recommendations for WordPress include

PHP version 7 or later

MySQL version 5.6 or later

technicalstuff Some web hosting providers haven’t yet upgraded to the latest version of PHP. If your web-hosting provider has older PHP or MySQL versions, the WordPress software will work with PHP 5.2.4 or later and MySQL 5.0. These older versions, however, are considered to be end of life, which means discontinued in the software world. Older versions of PHP and MySQL still work but are no longer supported and, therefore, are susceptible to security vulnerabilities.

After you have WordPress installed on your web server (see the installation instructions in Chapter 3), you can start using it to publish to your heart’s content. With the WordPress software, you can install several plugins that extend the functionality of the platform, as I describe in Chapter 7.

You also have full control of the core files and code that WordPress is built on. So if you have a knack for PHP and knowledge of MySQL, you can work within the code to create your own themes and plugins that you think would be good for you and your website. Find information about PHP and MySQL in Chapter 2.

You don’t need design ability to make your website look great. Members of the WordPress community have created more than 3,000 WordPress themes, and you can download them for free and install them on your WordPress site. (See Chapter 8.) Additionally, if you’re creatively inclined, like to create designs on your own, and know CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), you’ll be glad to know that you have full access to the template system within WordPress and can create your own custom themes. (See Part 4.)

tip The self-hosted WordPress.org software lets you run an unlimited number of websites on one installation of its software platform, on one domain. When you configure the Network options within WordPress to enable a multisite interface, you become administrator of a network of sites. All the options remain the same, but with the Network options configured, you can have additional websites and domains, as well as allow registered users of your website to host their own websites within your network. You can find out more about the WordPress Multisite feature in Chapter 13.

Sites that use the WordPress Network options include the following:

BBC America (www.bbcamerica.com): The BBC America site contains all the shows and movies that the TV network offers. It’s a huge WordPress Multisite network, with each show having an individual site.

The New York Times (www.nytimes.com/interactive/blogs/directory.html): Newspapers, magazines, and universities use WordPress to manage the blog sections of their websites. Another example is the Harvard Law School blog at http://news.harvard.edu/gazette.

Microsoft Windows (https://blogs.windows.com): Niche-specific blog networks use WordPress to manage the content they publish through various channels on their website about the Windows software — in multiple languages.

Chapter 2

WordPress Basics

IN THIS CHAPTER

check Considering website types

check Finding out what WordPress technology can do for you

check Outlining your initial website plan

A lot happens behind the scenes to make your WordPress blog or website function. The beauty of it is that you don’t have to worry about what’s happening on the back end to manage and maintain a WordPress site — unless you really want to. In this chapter, I delve a little bit into the technology behind the WordPress platform, including a brief look at PHP and MySQL, two software components required to run WordPress.

This chapter also covers some of the various technologies that help you on your way to running a successful website, such as comments and RSS feeds, as well as information about combatting spam.

Shining the Spotlight on WordPress

Publishing content is an evolutionary process, and blogs have evolved beyond personal diaries and journals. Undoubtedly, a blog is a fabulous tool for publishing your personal diary of thoughts and ideas, but blogs also serve as excellent tools for business, editorial journalism, news, and entertainment. Sometimes, you find a stand-alone blog that is the sum total of the website; at other times, you find a full website that contains a blog but has other offerings as well (products for sale, memberships, newsletters, forums, and so on). Here are some ways that people use blogs and websites powered by WordPress:

Personal: This type of blogger creates a blog as a personal journal or diary. You’re considered to be a personal blogger if you use your blog mainly to discuss topics that are personal to you or your life — your family, your cats, your children, or your interests (such as technology, politics, sports, art, or photography). My business partner, Brad Williams, keeps a personal blog at http://strangework.com.

Business: This type of site uses the power of blogs to promote a company’s business services, products, or both. Blogs are very effective tools for promotion and marketing, and business blogs usually offer helpful information to readers and consumers, such as tips and product reviews. Business blogs also let readers provide feedback and ideas, which can help a company improve its services. My business, WebDevStudios, keeps an active blog within the business website at https://webdevstudios.com/blog.

Media/journalism: More and more popular news outlets, such as Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN, have added blogs to their websites to provide information on current events, politics, and news on regional, national, and international levels. These news organizations often have editorial bloggers as well. Reader’s Digest is an example of such a publication; its WordPress-powered site is at www.rd.com.

Citizen journalism: The emergence of citizen journalism coincided with the swing from old media to new media. In old media, the journalists and news organizations direct the conversation about news topics. With the popularity of blogs and the millions of bloggers who exploded onto the Internet, old media felt a change in the wind. Average citizens, using the power of their voices on blogs, changed the direction of the conversation. Citizen journalists often fact-check traditional media news stories and expose inconsistencies, with the intention of keeping the media or local politicians in check. An example of citizen journalism is the Power Line blog at www.powerlineblog.com.

Professional: This category of blogger is growing every day. Professional bloggers are paid to blog for individual companies or websites. Blog networks, such as Scientific American (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com), have a full network of staff blogs. Also, several services match advertisers with bloggers so that the advertisers pay bloggers to make blog posts about their products. Is it possible to make money as a blogger? Yes, and making money by blogging is common these days. If you’re interested in this type of blogging, check out Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger blog at https://problogger.com. Rowse is considered to be the grandfather of all professional bloggers because for years, he has provided helpful resources and information about how to make money with blogging.

Dipping Into WordPress Technologies

The WordPress software is a personal publishing system that uses PHP and MySQL. This platform provides everything you need to create your own website and publish your own content dynamically, without having to know how to program those pages yourself. In short, all your content is stored in a MySQL database in your hosting account.

technicalstuff PHP (which stands for Hypertext Preprocessor — and PHP itself originally stood for personal home page, as named by its creator, Rasmus Lerdorf) is a server-side scripting language for creating dynamic web pages. When a visitor opens a page built in PHP, the server processes the PHP commands and then sends the results to the visitor’s browser. MySQL is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) that uses Structured Query Language (SQL), the most popular language for adding, accessing, and processing data in a database. If all that sounds like Greek to you, just think of MySQL as a big filing cabinet in which all the content on your website is stored.

Every time a visitor goes to your website to read your content, he makes a request that’s sent to a host server. The PHP programming language receives that request, obtains the requested information from the MySQL database, and then presents the requested information to your visitor through his web browser.

In using the term content as it applies to the data that’s stored in the MySQL database, I’m referring to your posts, pages, comments, and options that you set up in the WordPress Dashboard. The theme (design) you choose to use for your website — whether it’s the default theme, one you create for yourself, or one that you have custom-designed — isn’t part of the content, or data, stored in the database assigned to your website. Those files are part of the file system and aren’t stored in the database. So create and keep backups of any theme files that you’re using. See Part 4 for further information on WordPress theme management.

tip When you look for a hosting service, choose one that provides daily backups of your site so that your content and data won’t be lost in case something bad happens. Web-hosting providers that offer daily backups as part of their services can save the day by restoring your site to its original form. You can find more information on choosing a hosting provider in Chapter 3.

Archiving your publishing history

Packaged within the WordPress software is the capability to maintain chronological and categorized archives of your publishing history, automatically. WordPress uses PHP and MySQL technology to sort and organize everything you publish in an order that you, and your readers, can access by date and category. This archiving process is done automatically with every post or page you publish to your website.

When you create a post on your WordPress website, you can file that post in a category that you specify. This feature makes for a nifty archiving system in which you and your readers can find articles or posts that you’ve placed within a specific category. A Category archive page on my business website (https://webdevstudios.com/category/wordpress; see Figure 2-1) contains an archive of all the posts on the website that were published in the WordPress category.

FIGURE 2-1: A category archive page of my business blog.

WordPress lets you create as many categories as you want for filing your content and posts by topic. I’ve seen sites that have just one category and sites that have up to 1,800 categories. WordPress is all about preferences and options for organizing your content. On the other hand, using WordPress categories is your choice. You don’t have to use the category feature.

Interacting with your readers through comments

One of the most exciting and fun aspects of publishing on the web with WordPress is getting feedback from your readers the moment you make a post to your site. Feedback, referred to as comments, is akin to having a guestbook on your site. People can leave notes for you that are published to your site, and you can respond and engage your readers in conversation about the topic at hand. See Figure 2-2 and Figure 2-3 for examples. Having this function in your site creates the opportunity to expand the thoughts and ideas that you presented in your post by giving your readers the opportunity to add their two cents’ worth.

FIGURE 2-2: Readers use the form to leave their comments.

FIGURE 2-3: Readers comment on a post about freelancing.

In the WordPress Dashboard, you have full administrative control over who can and can’t leave comments. In addition, if someone leaves a comment with questionable content, you can edit the comment or delete it. You’re also free to choose to not