WordPress: The Missing Manual

by Matthew MacDonald

Overview

Whether you’re a budding blogger or seasoned Web designer, WordPress is a brilliant tool for creating websites, once you know how to tap its impressive features. The latest edition of this jargon-free Missing Manual shows you how to use WordPress 3.9’s themes, widgets, plug-ins, and souped-up editing and multimedia tools to build just about any kind of site.

The important stuff you need to know:

• Create your site. Get hands-on, A-to-Z instructions for building all types of websites, from classy blogs to professional-looking ecommerce sites.
• Add features. Choose from thousands of widgets and plug-ins to enhance your site’s ease of use, looks, and performance.
• Mix in multimedia. Add picture galleries, slideshows, video clips, music players, and podcasts to your pages.
• Attract an audience. Create automatic content feeds, sign up site subscribers, and help readers share your posts on social media.
• Fine-tune your content. Analyze site statistics to improve your content and reach, and to optimize your site for search engines.
• Go Mobile. Choose a theme that automatically reconfigures your site for mobile devices.
• Build a truly unique site. Learn how to customize WordPress themes to create a site that looks exactly the way you want it to.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781449341909
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	07/17/2014
Pages:	610
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Matthew MacDonald is a science and technology writer with well over a dozen books to his name. Web novices can tiptoe out onto the Internet with him in Creating a Website: The Missing Manual. HTML fans can learn about the cutting edge of web design in HTML5: The Missing Manual. And human beings of all description can discover just how strange they really are in the quirky handbooks Your Brain: The Missing Manual and Your Body: The Missing Manual.

Table of Contents

The Missing Credits; About the Author; About the Creative Team; Acknowledgments; The Missing Manual Series; Introduction; About This Book; About the Outline; About the Online Resources; Using Code Examples; Safari® Books Online; Part 1: Starting Out with WordPress; Chapter 1: The WordPress Landscape; 1.1 How WordPress Works; 1.2 What You Can Build with WordPress; 1.3 WordPress Hosting; Chapter 2: Signing Up with WordPress.com; 2.1 Choosing a Web Address; 2.2 Creating Your WordPress.com Account; 2.3 Managing Your New Site; 2.4 Exploring the WordPress.com Community; 2.5 Visiting the WordPress.com Store; Chapter 3: Installing WordPress on Your Web Host; 3.1 Preparing for WordPress; 3.2 Installing WordPress with an Autoinstaller; 3.3 Installing WordPress by Hand; 3.4 Keeping WordPress Up to Date; Part 2: Building a WordPress Blog; Chapter 4: Creating Posts; 4.1 Introducing the Dashboard; 4.2 Adding Your First Post; 4.3 Organizing Your Posts; 4.4 How to Get High-Quality Web Addresses; 4.5 Dashboard Tricks to Save Time and Effort; Chapter 5: Choosing and Polishing Your Theme; 5.1 How Themes Work; 5.2 Choosing a New Theme; 5.3 Tweaking Your Theme; 5.4 Customizing Your Widgets; 5.5 Mobile Themes; Chapter 6: Jazzing Up Your Posts; 6.1 Making Fancier Posts; 6.2 Adding Pictures; 6.3 Featured Images; 6.4 Showing Part of a Post; 6.5 Post Formats; Chapter 7: Adding Pages and Menus; 7.1 Creating Pages; 7.2 Viewing Pages; 7.3 Custom Menus; 7.4 Changing Your Home Page; 7.5 Page Templates; Chapter 8: Comments: Letting Your Readers Talk Back; 8.1 Allowing or Forbidding Comments; 8.2 The Life Cycle of a Comment; 8.3 The Ongoing Conversation; 8.4 Making Comments More Personal; 8.5 Stamping Out Comment Spam; Part 3: Supercharging Your Blog; Chapter 9: Getting New Features with Plug-Ins; 9.1 Managing Plug-Ins; 9.2 The Jetpack Plug-In; 9.3 Adding Mobile Support; 9.4 Backing Up a WordPress Site; 9.5 Better Performance with Caching; Chapter 10: Adding Picture Galleries, Video, and Music; 10.1 Understanding Embeds and Shortcodes; 10.2 Showing Groups of Pictures; 10.3 Embedding a Video; 10.4 Playing Audio Files; Chapter 11: Collaborating with Multiple Authors; 11.1 Adding People to Your Site; 11.2 Working with Authors; 11.3 Building a Private Community; 11.4 Creating a Network of Sites; Chapter 12: Attracting a Crowd; 12.1 Encouraging Your Readers to Share; 12.2 Keeping Readers in the Loop; 12.3 Managing Your Site’s Feed; 12.4 Search Engine Optimization; 12.5 WordPress Site Statistics; Part 4: From Blog to Website; Chapter 13: Editing Themes: The Key to Customizing Your Site; 13.1 The Goal: More Flexible Blogs and Sites; 13.2 Taking Control of Your Theme; 13.3 Protecting Yourself with a Child Theme; 13.4 Editing the Styles in Your Theme; 13.5 Editing the Code in Your Theme; Chapter 14: Building an Advanced WordPress Site; 14.1 Planning Your Site; 14.2 Adding New Types of Posts; 14.3 Creating Custom Category Pages; 14.4 Building a Better Home Page; 14.5 Making a Smarter Product Page; 14.6 Adding eCommerce; Part 5: Appendixes; Migrating from WordPress.com; Before You Begin; Transferring Your Data; Cleaning Up Your New Site; Securing a Self-Hosted Site; 1. Crash-Proof Your Site with Backups; 2. Change Your Posting Account; 3. Be Cautious When Extending Your Site; 4. Prevent Password-Guessing Attacks; 5. Hide Passwords with SSL; Useful Websites; Chapter Links;