GET UNDER THE HOOD OF WORDPRESS! THE WORDPRESS ANTHOLOGY BY MICK OLINIK & RAENA JACKSON ARMITAGE PANTONE 2955 CPANTONE Orange 021 C CMYK 100, 45, 0, 37CMYK O, 53, 100, 0 Black 100%Black 50% CMYK: Pantone: Grey scale Summary of Contents Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii 1. Hello World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2. WordPress 101 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 3. The Loop and WordPress File System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 4. Post Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 5. Plugins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 6. Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 7. Taxonomies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 8. Image Galleries and Featured Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 9. The WordPress API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 10. Multisite: Rolling Your Own Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 11. Going Global with Themes and Plugins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 12. SEO, Marketing, and Goal Conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 THE WORDPRESS ANTHOLOGY BY MICK OLINIK & RAENA JACKSON ARMITAGE The WordPress Anthology by Mick Olinik and Raena Jackson Armitage Copyright © 2011 SitePoint Pty. Ltd. Product Manager: Simon Mackie Technical Editor: Tom Museth Expert Reviewer: Brad Williams Indexer: Michele Combs Editor: Kelly Steele Cover Designer: Alex Walker Notice of Rights All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations included in critical articles or reviews. Notice of Liability The author and publisher have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the information herein. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors and SitePoint Pty. Ltd., nor its dealers or distributors, will be held liable for any damages caused either directly or indirectly by the instructions contained in this book, or by the software or hardware products described herein. Trademark Notice Rather than indicating every occurrence of a trademarked name as such, this book uses the names only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner with no intention of infringement of the trademark. Published by SitePoint Pty. Ltd. 48 Cambridge Street, Collingwood VIC 3066 Australia Web: www.sitepoint.com Email: business@sitepoint.com ISBN 978-0-9871530-0-5 (print) ISBN 978-0-9871530-5-0 (ebook) Printed and bound in the United States of America iv About Mick Olinik Mick Olinik is a web developer and business model expert who’s had the luxury and pleasure of watching the Web grow up over the past 15 years. A partner at Superfast Websites and NinjaDesk Elite Technical Support & Training, Mick is a WordPress expert who specializes in graphic design, WordPress theme skinning, and organic search engine optimization. He’s the go-to web development guru for several of the top internet mar- keting specialists in the world, and a regular contributor to sitepoint.com. A graduate of Michigan State Uni- versity and member of Phi Gamma Delta, Mick spends his time evenly between Asheville, North Carolina and Traverse City, Michigan. Aside from an obsessive passion for the ever-evolving technologies that bring the Web to your local internet browser or phone, Mick enjoys music, outdoor activities, photography, playing with his dog Lacie, spending time with family, and observing different business models in action. Come and say hi at his personal site at http://www.mickolinik.com, or follow him on Facebook at http://www.fbmick.com. About Raena Jackson Armitage Raena Jackson Armitage is a web developer, trainer, and content management geek. In 2010, Raena co-authored SitePoint’s Build Your Own Wicked WordPress Themes, and has contributed to the SitePoint blogs and newsletters. When she’s not pushing bytes around the Internet, you’ll find her on her bike, watching Australian Rules football, gaming, or tracking down the perfect all-day breakfast. About Brad Williams Brad Williams is the co-founder of WebDevStudios.com and the co-author of Professional WordPress (2010) and Professional WordPress Plugin Development (2011), both published by Wiley. Brad has been developing websites for more than 15 years, recently focusing on open-source technologies such as WordPress. He is also one of the organizers of the Philadelphia WordPress Meetup Group and WordCamp Philly. You can find Brad on Twitter at @williamsba and at his blog at http://strangework.com. About Tom Museth Tom Museth first fell in love with code while creating scrolling adventure games in BASIC on his Commodore 64, and usability testing them on reluctant family members. He then spent 16 years as a journalist and production editor before deciding web development would be more rewarding. He has a passion for jQuery, PHP, HTML5, and CSS3, is eagerly eyeing the world of mobile dev, and likes to de-stress via a book, a beach, and a fishing rod. v [...]... extract WordPress Upload WordPress to your web server using either your FTP client or the control panel running on your server, as shown in Figure 1.1 Figure 1.1 Zipped WordPress package on a cPanel web server Note that you can extract the WordPress files locally and then upload them to the server individually, or you can upload the compressed WordPress file and then extract the files directly onto the. .. similar to the one employed 4 http:/ /wordpress. com http:/ /wordpress. org 6 http://typepad.com 5 4 The WordPress Anthology at wordpress. com (for more information on multisite, flip over to Chapter 10) From here on out, when we talk about WordPress in this book, we’ll mean self-hosted WordPress unless specifically otherwise stated Core WordPress When you download WordPress from wordpress. org, you are downloading... This book is based on the WordPress 3.2 major release, nicknamed Gershwin WordPress and its License, the GPL WordPress is an open-source content management system licensed under the Gnu Public License (GPL), version 2 The license itself can be found in the license.txt file delivered in every WordPress installation; however, most people usually ignore it, because they just think of WordPress as open source,... of software to use About half of the core contributors work for Mullenweg’s company Automattic, while the others are from all walks of the WordPress community Furthermore, developers around the world continue to build and support new plugins and themes that are useful for a whole range of purposes, and translators abound to voluntarily interpret plugins, themes, and WordPress itself into additional... with different categories WordPress. com versus WordPress. org WordPress comes in two flavors: wordpress. com4, and self-hosted WordPress that’s available for download at wordpress. org5 Wordpress. com is a network of websites supported and hosted by Automattic Users can visit wordpress. com, sign up for a free account, and create as many blogs as they like in a similar fashion to other popular hosted blogging... all the menus, functionality, and basic concepts about core WordPress you’ll need to have down pat before you tackle the code underpinning WordPress Chapter 3: The Loop and WordPress File System The Loop is the beating heart of WordPress, as it controls how content is displayed in any given installation In truth, The Loop rules everything in WordPress; it is a fairly simple concept, but without having... two mistakes before the end of this one The Errata page3 on the book’s website will always have the latest information about known typographical and code errors The SitePoint Network The SitePoint network now features a host of sites dedicated to the latest hot topics in web development and design: RubySource4 , DesignFestival5, BuildMobile6, PHPMaster7, and CloudSpring8 In addition, SitePoint publishes... new software under the GPL It’s necessary to note that the GPL license employed by WordPress in no way involves content, because content isn’t derived from the WordPress core Instead, the content housed on a WordPress site is distinct from WordPress This is an important distinction to understand, specifically for legal professionals concerned about the security and integrity of their client’s intellectual... if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_ post(); the_ content(); endwhile; endif; If the code is to be found in the book’s code archive, the name of the file will appear at the top of the program listing, like this: xxiii example.php add_action('save_post', 'save_conference_speaker_attributes'); If only part of the file is displayed, this is indicated by the word excerpt: example.php (excerpt) function... server The latter method is the way to go if you can do it, because it’s typically faster, and it minimizes the risk of a corrupted or incomplete upload You’ll also remove the chance of an upload timeout that causes some files to not be uploaded at all 11 12 http:/ /wordpress. org http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/definition/tarball 10 The WordPress Anthology The Right Place Once you extract the . . . . . . . . . 287 THE WORDPRESS ANTHOLOGY BY MICK OLINIK & RAENA JACKSON ARMITAGE The WordPress Anthology by Mick Olinik and Raena Jackson Armitage Copyright © 2011 SitePoint Pty. Ltd. Product. effort to ensure the accuracy of the information herein. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors and SitePoint Pty 2010, Raena co-authored SitePoint s Build Your Own Wicked WordPress Themes, and has contributed to the SitePoint blogs and newsletters. When she’s not pushing bytes around the Internet, you’ll find