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Introduction
What You Need to Know
If you're planning to make the world's most awesome blog, you don't need a stitch of experience. Chapters 1 to 12 will cover everything you need to know. However, you will come across some examples that feature HTML (the language of the Web), and any HTML knowledge you already have will pay off handsomely.
If you're planning to create a website that isn't a blog (like a catalog of products for your handmade jewelry business), you need to step up your game. You'll still start with the WordPress basics in Chapters 1 through 12, but you'll also need to learn the advanced customization skills you'll find in Chapters 13 and 14. How much customization you do depends on the type of site you plan to build, and whether you can find a theme that already does most of the work for you. But sooner or later, you'll probably decide to crack open one of the WordPress template files that controls your site and edit it.
When you do that, you'll encounter two more web standards: CSS, the style sheet language that sets the layout and formatting for your site; and PHP, the web programming language up on which WordPress is built. But don't panic—we'll go gently and introduce the essentials from the ground up. You won't learn enough to write your own web programs, but you will pick up the skills you need to customize a WordPress theme so you can build the kind of site you want.
About this Book
This book is divided into five parts, each with several chapters:
• Part One: Starting Out with WordPress. In this part of the book, you'll start planning your path to WordPress web domination. In Chapter 1, you'll plan the type of website you want, decide how to host it, and think hard about its domain name, the unique address that visitors type in to find your site on the Web. Then you'll see how to get a basic blog up and running, either on WordPress.com (Chapter 2) or on your own web host (Chapter 3).
• Part Two: Building a WordPress Blog. This part explains everything you need to know to create a respectable blog. You'll learn how to add posts (Chapter 4), pick a stylish theme (Chapter 5), make your posts look fancier (Chapter 6), add pages and menus (Chapter 7), and manage comments (Chapter 8). Even if you're planning something more exotic than JAWB (Just Another WordPress Blog), don't skip this section. The key skills you'll learn here also underpin custom sites, like the kind you'll learn to build in Part Four of the book.
• Part Three: Supercharging Your Blog. If all you want is a simple, classy blog, you can stop now—your job is done. But if you're hoping to add more glam to your site, this part will help you out. First, you'll learn that plug-ins can add thousands of new features to self-hosted sites (Chapter 9). Next, you'll see how to put video, music, and photo galleries on any WordPress site (Chapter 10). You'll also learn how to collaborate with a whole group of authors (Chapter 11), and how to attract boatloads of web visitors (Chapter 12).
• Part Four: From Blog to Website. In this part, you'll take your WordPress skills beyond the blog and learn to craft a custom website. First, you'll crack open a WordPress theme and learn to change the way your site works by adding, inserting, or modifying the CSS styles and PHP commands embedded inside (Chapter 13). Next, in Chapter 14, you'll apply this knowledge to create a WordPress product-catalog site that doesn't look anything like a typical blog. • Part Five: Appendixes. At the end of this book, you'll find two appendixes. The first (Appendix A) explains how to take a website you created on the free WordPress.com hosting service and move it to another web host to get more features. The second (Appendix B) lists some useful web links culled from the chapters in this book.
