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Introduction
1.Getting started: WordPress from scratch
You’ve got something to say. Whether it’s just you and your desire to let everyone know about your growing collection of hand-crocheted Star Wars figures, or a big company with hundreds of products, blogging let’s anyone publish online without having to be a genius about HTML, CSS, or any other programming. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to get hosting for your blog, install WordPress, and create and publish your first blog post.
2. Changing your blog’s look and feel: A question of style
You’ve finally got your own blog. But it looks so...generic. Time to make it your own. WordPress comes preloaded with lots of themes you can apply to your blog, but we’re going to go one step further and make our own custom theme. Along the way, you’ll learn some basic HTML and CSS to really make your blog look exactly how you want. We’ll also delve into CSS rules, which allow you to quickly change how your blog looks, and take advantage of WordPress widgets to easily add sidebar content to the blog
3. Content management with wordpress: Beyond the blog
You’re starting to outgrow the blog. Maybe your business is growing, maybe you need more control of what shows up where on your blog, and when. Luckily, WordPress handles a lot more than just chronological blog posts. We’ll start to tap into its content management system capabilities by creating static pages like on a regular website, adding navigation for the new pages, and changing the home page of your new site so it isn’t your blog. Get ready to build a full-fledged website practically without writing a single line of HTML or CSS.
4. Users, categories, and tags: Keeping things organized
It’s time to invite some friends to the party. Blogging (or managing a WordPress site) doesn’t have to be a solitary venture. Loads of well-know blogs out there feature multiple user roles, from writers to editors and administrators. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to get multiple people posting on the same blog, manage the workflow across all those people, and put categories and tags to work in organizing your site’s content.
5. Video and plug-ins: Getting things moving
Video can add a whole other dimension to your blog. For nearly any kind of content, video makes your site more engaging, and gives you readers plenty more to comment on and share with their friends. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to host your videos online and include them (along with other downloadable files) in your blog posts. We’ll introduce plug-ins, which do a lot of heavy lifting (and coding) for you, and use categories to create a consistent, easy-to-find home for all the videos on your site.
6. Podcasting and syndication: Spreading the word
It’s time more people knew about your awesome site. Your blog is humming along, and you’ve already figured out how to expand WordPress to manage an entire website. Now that you’ve got video playing there too, why not expand your audience base? In this chapter, we’ll discover how to distribute videos through Apple’s iTunes store as podcasts, and how to syndicate your content so that a ton more people will find out about your site (and keep coming back for more).
7. Securing wordpress: Locking things down
Not everyone on the Internet is nice. It’s a fact of modern life on the Internet: there are people who spend their time trying to break into, or hack, other people’s websites. Some do it just for the thrill, others to cause chaos, and some are simply after sensitive information like credit card numbers, social security numbers, and other personal information. Now, you’ll learn how to make your WordPress site more secure, with unique usernames, strong passwords, and more. You’ll also kick off automatic backups of all your WordPress files so you can restore your site if it ever does get hacked, or goes down for other reasons.
8. Making wordpress fast: Time for the passing lane
Speed is important online. A fast-loading site isn’t just about keeping visitors around. Yes, if your site doesn’t load quickly then people might just wander off, but a slow site also gets dinged in search results from the likes of Google, meaning fewer people will actually find your site in the first place. Beyond just increasing your horsepower, you’ll also learn how to use caching, database optimization, and additional hosting options to beef up your site to handle more traffic, too.
