Make great websites the easy way
CYAN MAGENTA YELLOW BLACK PANTONE 123 C BOOKS FOR PROFESSIONALS BY PROFESSIONALS ® Beginning WordPress THE EXPERT’S VOICE ® IN WEB DEVELOPMENT Companion eBook Available Beginning Dear Reader, Companion eBook WordPress Stephanie Leary When I began looking for WordPress books, I found plenty of incredibly basic guides for blogging and a few hardcore advanced guides for developers, but nothing in-between for beginners who want to get more out of WordPress This book fills that gap It’s a beginning developer guide that treats WordPress like the powerful content management system it has become If you’re a web developer who already understands HTML, CSS, and maybe a little PHP, but you’ve never used WordPress before, this book is for you Inside, you’ll learn how to install, configure, and customize WordPress to make it the perfect CMS for your next project It walks you through the complete development of a WordPress site, starting with importing content from another CMS, or creating your own from scratch You’ll then learn how to create custom themes that give you complete control over your site’s appearance, including optimizing it for that that all-important search engine optimization You’ll see how to extend WordPress with widgets and plugins when your needs outstrip the built-in features Finally, you’ll learn how to secure your WordPress installation and optimize its performance This book also covers two of the big new features in WordPress version 3: custom content types, which let you take your content beyond basic blog posts and pages, and the network (the integration of WordPress MU into the core software), which lets you build numerous connected WordPress sites from a single software installation The code samples in this book include two themes that you can customize fully, and several complete plugins that you can work through and modify By the end of the book you will have the knowledge to create your own plugins and share them with other users on the WordPress Extend site Every example in this book was taken from a real-world project and has been tested and proven out in the open I hope that all of the information, examples, and source code provided in this book helps you learn to use and adapt WordPress in your own work, and to create some great sites I look forward to seeing them Beginning WordPress Make great websites the easy way A complete beginner's guide to WordPress that shows you how to create a customized website for yourself, your business, or your social network Stephanie Leary See last page for details on $10 eBook version SOURCE CODE ONLINE ISBN 978-1-4302-2895-0 39 9 US $39.99 Leary www.apress.com Stephanie Leary Shelve in: Web Development/General User level: Beginner 781430 228950 this print for content only—size & color not accurate 7.5 x 9.25 spine = 0.8125" 432 page count Beginning WordPress Stephanie Leary Beginning WordPress Copyright © 2010 by Stephanie Leary All rights reserved No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4302-2895-0 ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4302-2896-7 Printed and bound in the United States of America Trademarked names, logos, and images may appear in this book Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, logo, or image we use the names, logos, and images only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights President and Publisher: Paul Manning Lead Editor: Ben Renow-Clarke Technical Reviewer: Shelley Keith Editorial Board: Clay Andres, Steve Anglin, Mark Beckner, Ewan Buckingham, Gary Cornell, Jonathan Gennick, Jonathan Hassell, Michelle Lowman, Matthew Moodie, Duncan Parkes, Jeffrey Pepper, Frank Pohlmann, Douglas Pundick, Ben Renow-Clarke, Dominic Shakeshaft, Matt Wade, Tom Welsh Coordinating Editor: Laurin Becker, Fran Parnell Copy Editor: Mary Behr Compositor: Bytheway Publishing Services Indexer: Toma Mulligan Artist: April Milne Cover Designer: Anna Ishchenko Distributed to the book trade worldwide by Springer Science+Business Media, LLC., 233 Spring Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10013 Phone 1-800-SPRINGER, fax (201) 348-4505, e-mail orders-ny@springersbm.com, or visit www.springeronline.com For information on translations, please e-mail rights@apress.com, or visit www.apress.com Apress and friends of ED books may be purchased in bulk for academic, corporate, or promotional use eBook versions and licenses are also available for most titles For more information, reference our Special Bulk Sales–eBook Licensing web page at www.apress.com/info/bulksales The information in this book is distributed on an “as is” basis, without warranty Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author(s) nor Apress shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this work The source code for this book is available to readers at www.apress.com You will need to answer questions pertaining to this book in order to successfully download the code CONTENTS Contents at a Glance Contents iv About the Author xvi About the Technical Reviewer xvii Acknowledgments xviii Introduction xix Chapter 1: About WordPress Chapter 2: Installing and Upgrading 15 Chapter 3: Dashboard and Settings 41 Chapter 4: Working with Content 61 Chapter 5: Importing Content .105 Chapter 6: Creating a Basic Theme 125 Chapter 7: Creating an Advanced Theme 173 Chapter 8: Creating Widgets .205 Chapter 9: Creating Plugins 225 Chapter 10: Users and Roles .271 Chapter 11: Performance and Security 289 Chapter 12: Custom Content Types, Taxonomies, and Fields .309 Chapter 13: Setting up the Network 347 Appendix 1: Plugin Index 373 Appendix 2: Theme Functions 381 Appendix 3: Plugin Recipes 385 Index 389 iii CONTENTS Contents Contents at a Glance iii Contents iv About the Author xvi About the Technical Reviewer xvii Acknowledgments xviii Introduction xix Chapter 1: About WordPress Why WordPress? Easy to Set Up Easy to Use Easy to Extend The Business Benefits of WordPress Sites Built with WordPress Personal Blogs Blog Networks Social Networks Colleges and Universities Small Businesses 10 WordPress Tour .11 Anatomy of a post 12 Summary 14 Chapter 2: Installing and Upgrading 15 iv CONTENTS System Requirements .15 One-click Installation .15 Installation Using the Web Interface 16 Logging In 20 Editing and Uploading wp-config.php 22 Troubleshooting .23 Installing Themes 25 Installing Plugins .28 Plugging the gaps: Essential Plugins 32 Upgrading Plugins 33 Upgrading WordPress 35 Automatic Upgrades 36 Manual Upgrades 38 Moving a WordPress Site .39 Summary 40 Chapter 3: Dashboard and Settings 41 The Dashboard .42 QuickPress 43 Incoming Links 43 WordPress Development Blog 44 Plugin dashboard widgets 44 Dashboard Widgets and Users 44 Settings 45 General 45 Writing 47 Reading 48 Discussion 49 Media 54 v CONTENTS Privacy 56 Permalinks 57 Summary 59 Chapter 4: Working with Content 61 Posts 61 Content 63 Permalinks 70 Publish Settings 70 Categories 71 Tags 72 Featured Images 74 Excerpts 75 Comments and Trackbacks 75 Revisions 77 Custom Fields 78 Pages .78 Page Attributes: Parents, Templates, and Order 78 Posts vs Pages: Same, but Different .82 Posts are Pages; Pages are Posts 83 Editing Posts and Pages 83 Media Files 88 Images and Galleries 88 Video 94 Audio 96 Other File Types 97 The Media Library 97 Links 98 Basic Link Attributes 98 vi CONTENTS Link Relationships: XFN™ 99 Advanced Link Attributes 101 Link Feed 101 Feeds .101 Summary .103 Chapter 5: Importing Content .105 Before Importing 105 Importing Blogs .105 Importing from WordPress.com 107 Importing from Blogger 110 Importing Joomla or Mambo Sites .113 Importing Other MySQL-based Sites .116 Drupal 116 Importing HTML Files 117 After Importing: Fixing What’s Broken 120 Link URLs 120 Paths to Linked Files 121 Truncated or Garbled Content 122 Summary .123 Chapter 6: Creating a Basic Theme 125 Using Widgets 125 Using Menus 127 Creating a Menu 127 Editing Menu Items 128 Creating Multiple Menus 129 Using Header and Background Images 130 Turning HTML into a Theme 132 vii CONTENTS Header 134 Body 135 Footer 141 Stylesheet 141 Template Tags .142 Theme Files 144 Theme File Hierarchy 145 The Home Page 146 Single Posts 146 Pages 146 Custom Content Types 146 Category Archives 147 Tag Archives 147 Custom Taxonomy Archives 147 Author Archives 148 Date-Based Archives 148 Search Results 148 Error 404 (File Not Found) Page 148 Attachment Pages 149 Listing Comments 149 Including Additional Files .151 Styling Content 151 Changing Appearance Based on Context .151 Conditional Tags 152 Posts vs Pages 153 Categories 153 Author Archives 154 Search Results 155 viii ... Columns 33 0 Including Custom Content Types in Your Theme 33 3 Feeds for Custom Content Types 33 5 Custom Fields in Custom Content Types .33 6 Creating the... Fields .30 9 Chapter 13: Setting up the Network 34 7 Appendix 1: Plugin Index 37 3 Appendix 2: Theme Functions 38 1 Appendix 3: Plugin Recipes 38 5 Index... 30 3 Changing the Table Prefix 30 3 Backing Up the Database and Files 30 4 Monitoring Security Problems .30 5 Summary .30 7 Chapter