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

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