building a website the easy way with wordpress
DESCRIPTION
A step by step guide to installing WordPress and using WordPress as a CMS. Starting with the Install. Then a brake down of the settings tabs, followed by a list of useful plug-ins. Also the basics to setting up word press with child themes and static pages using custom templates.TRANSCRIPT
Building a Website the easy way with
By James Tryon
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
What is WordPress
WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.
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A Little About WordPress
Wordpress is used on Millions of sites, and and is seen by tens of millions of people every day.
Wordpress was created by and for the community. Under the GNU General Public License is a widely used free software license
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What do you need to run wordpress?
1 - a web host2 - you need a domain3 - a little know how
PHP version 4.3 or greaterMySQL version 4.1.2 or greater
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Big Names that use WordPress
Nikon - Pepsi - Nokia OnStar - Best Buy - Ford Logitech - Samsung - GE ebay - Xerox - PlayStation The Wall Street Journal yahoo - CNN - Wired
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Cool Facts on WordPress
Plugs8,038/8,058/8,063
Downloads71,388,637
Themes1,111/1,114/1,114
Downloads11,390,735
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Flavors of WordPress
.COM
.COM | VIP
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Making a Plan• Website Host Requirements Checked and Verified
http://codex.wordpress.org/Hosting_WordPress
• Versions of PHP and MySQL Checked & Verifiedhttp://codex.wordpress.org/Hosting_WordPress
• Web Host Compatibility with New Versions http://codex.wordpress.org/Core_Update_Host_Compatibility(stay away from godaddy - they over sell there servers and the bandwith suffers)
• Your Website Username and Password
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Famous 5-Minute Install1 - Download and unzip the WordPress package, if you haven't already.2 - Create a database for WordPress on your web server.3 - Create a MySQL user who has all privileges for accessing and modifying it.4 - Rename the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php.5 - Open wp-config.php in your favorite text editor and fill in your database details as explained in Editing wp-config.php to generate and use your secret key password.6 - Place the WordPress files in the desired location on your web server:
If you want to integrate WordPress into the root of your domain (e.g. http://example.com/), move or upload all contents of the unzipped WordPress directory (but excluding the directory itself) into the root directory of your web server.
If you want to have your WordPress installation in its own subdirectory on your web site (e.g. http://example.com/blog/), rename the directory wordpress to the name you'd like the subdirectory to have and move or upload it to your web server. For example if you want the WordPress installation in a subdirectory called "blog", you should rename the directory called "wordpress" to "blog" and upload it to the root directory of your web server.
Hint: If your FTP transfer is too slow read how to avoid FTPing at : Step 1: Download and Extract.Run the WordPress installation script by accessing wp-admin/install.php in your favorite web browser.
If you installed WordPress in the root directory, you should visit: http://example.com/wp-admin/install.php
If you installed WordPress in its own subdirectory called blog, for example, you should visit: http://example.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php
That's it! WordPress should now be installed.
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Create your Data Base
Database Name: wordpress
Default character set: utf8
Default Collation: utf8_bin
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Create your User
user name: wordpress_admin
host: localhost
password: iE8-MQG1DRPIOeVDYYSk_EMRR5Rfu&7Y
confirm password: iE8-MQG1DRPIOeVDYYSk_EMRR5Rfu&7Y
http://www.sethcardoza.com/tools/random_password_generator/
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Link your Userto the Data base
Just set the privileges for the user on the database you created. I set it so the admin can do anything to that data base.
Once you have everything uploaded to your server, simple to go the url
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Oh No! what do I do now?
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We can do 3 things
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We can do 3 things
• let wordpress do all the work
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We can do 3 things
• let wordpress do all the work
• Set up the wp-config.php your self
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We can do 3 things
• let wordpress do all the work
• Set up the wp-config.php your self
• We can stop here and go get a beer
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We’ll Let WordPress Give it a Try
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Still have errors?
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Still have errors?
Why do you hate me!
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OK this is a easy fix
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Are you sure your ready for this?
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First thing’s First, lets change the
password to something we can remember
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I like "password"
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lets take a look at our new WordPress site
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Yep - that’s good old "Kubrick"
but it's still a blog
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Time to start customizing WordPress
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Create a new user with administrator rights
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logout from your admin account and login as that new user.
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logout from your admin account and login as that new user.
Then delete the old admin user and all his posts and links.
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WHAT!
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It’s for Security
admin is to common and it is the first account hackers will try
Then delete all comments from test user, post, links, and Blogroll
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Now you have an almost empty site to work on.
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Lets start to go through the settings tabs
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General
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All your basic stuff in here, you can change it as you see
fit. I'm ok with it.
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Writing
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I never change anything on this page.
You can set it up to post via e-mail but why
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Reading
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Reading• you can set the number of post that show up on the blog
home page
• you can also change the amount of post that show up in your rss
• they even give you the option to change the rss feed from full text to summary.
• this is were you change the settings for use a static page or a blog page. (more lator)
• This option may not work if you use some premium themes as they will use the file home.php for the Home page layout. In those kind of themes you will find a separate template for a blog page.
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Discussion
• I never change any of these Settings
• To reflect the way you want to handle comments, if you want to have people commenting or not.
• For a static business website without a blog you can disable commenting here. (I do this on the Template level)
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Media
• you can change the size of the images hear but I would weight tell you have the design done so you know what size to change the sizes to
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Privacy
• lets you pick if you want search engines see your site.
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Permalinks
• Pretty urls
• /%category%/%post_id%/%postname%/
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Miscellaneous
• I leave this alone
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Remove or rename the default post category
• The standard post category in WordPress is set to “Uncategorized” with the same for the Slug.
• Set this to something that make since to you and your site
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Delete or rename default and create new link categories
• The default for links in WordPress is “Blogroll".
• I never use this part of wordpress.
• Never had a need
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Install, Activate and Configure Plugins
(most good plugins have very ugly sites)
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First off Remove "Hello Dolly" I really like Photo Matt but this plug-in is just dumb
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List of plugins we use almost all the time
All in One SEO Pack• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/• http://semperfiwebdesign.com/portfolio/wordpress/wordpress-plugins/all-in-one-
seo-pack/#more-59contact form 7
• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/• http://contactform7.com/• Simple but flexible. Just another contact form plugin.
WordPress.com Stats• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/• Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. • Requires a WordPress.com API key.
Google XML Sitemaps• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/• http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-
generator/• This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines
like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.Akismet
• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/akismet/• http://akismet.com/• 14,163,866,845 spams caught so far
10,256,853 so far today83% of all comments are spam
• (4pm on jan 21st 2010)• Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look
like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under "Comments." To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin.
Google Analytics for WordPress• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/• http://yoast.com/wordpress/google-analytics/• This plugin makes it simple to add Google Analytics with extra search engines and
automatic clickout and download tracking to your WordPress blog.pageMash
• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pagemash/• http://joelstarnes.co.uk/blog/pagemash/
WP-DB-Backup• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/• http://ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup/• backups should be done on the server, but this is also nice to have
Favatars• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/favatars/• http://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/wiki/favatars• A system to show favicon.ico files as avatars: "Favatars". Entire recode by Jeff Minard
(fixes for 2.5.x by Carlo Perassi). Previous Versions care of: Joen, Paul James, and Matthew.
WP Favicon• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-favicon/• http://geekthegathering.com/wp-favicon-add-a-favicon-to-your-blog/• The "WP Favicon" plugin add a favicon to your site. Most of the themes just forgot to
manage this small but nice feature.Feed Subscriber Stats
• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/feed-subscriber-stats/• http://www.allancollins.net/368/feed-subscriber-stats-3/• This plugin will show the number of subscribers according to FeedBurner.
Subscribe to Comments• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/subscribe-to-comments/• http://txfx.net/wordpress-plugins/subscribe-to-comments/• Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. Based
on version 1 from ScriptygoddessWickett Twitter Widget
• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wickett-twitter-widget/• Display Tweets in the sidebar of your blog
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/yet-another-related-posts-plugin/• http://mitcho.com/code/yarpp/• Returns a list of related entries based on a unique algorithm for display on your blog and
RSS feeds. A templating feature allows customization of the display.W3 Total Cache
• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/• http://www.w3-edge.com/wordpress-plugins/w3-total-cache/• The fastest and most complete WordPress performance plugin. Dramatically improve the
speed user experience of your blog by adding: page caching, database caching, minify, content delivery network (CDN) functionality and more...
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Creating a Static Page
• Lets start by creating a basic page in WordPress. We will call it home.
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Install a new theme
• http://getk2.com/
• Supports Child themes
• http://code.google.com/p/kaytwo/w/list
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Set up a child theme
• Create a new folder in the WordPress themes folder (wp-content/themes/) to contain your child theme files.
• For example: wp-content/themes/k2-custom/
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Create a style.css file with the following content:
/*Theme Name: your child theme nameTheme URI: the-theme's-homepageDescription: a-brief-descriptionAuthor: your-nameAuthor URI: your-URITemplate: K2*/
Note: Make absolutely sure whatever you have in Template: matches the folder name that K2 resides in. This is case-sensitive. For example: if K2 resides in the path wp-content/themes/kaytwo-1.0/, you would use: Template: kaytwo-1.0
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A child theme needs
• style.css
• screenshot.jpg
• what ever files you want to overwrite
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Working on creating a Static home page
• Now that we have our child theme set up, we can start to create our static pages.
• Copy page.php from your parent theme and rename it to page-”your call”.php
• add the template tag to the top of the file
<?php/*Template Name: Home*/?>
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Working on creating a Static home page
• Save all changes and upload
• Then go back to settings->Reading
• Change the radio button to static
• Pick your Pages
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Working on creating a Static home page
• Next you can start to customized your templates.
• This is almost plan HTML and CSS
• Some cases no HTML just CSS
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Working on creating a Static home page
• Then your going to have to go to:pages: edit
• Set your template
• Check out your hard work
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Extra Folders
• I like to create basic folders in the root of my site:
• js
• img
• flash
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JavaScript Tricks <script type="text/javascript"> jQuery(document).ready(function(){ jQuery("#slider").easySlider({ auto: false, continuous: true, nextId: "slider1next", prevId: "slider1prev" }); });</script>
The nice thing is wordpress comes with jQuery installed,but you have to write it a little different.
The $ like most jQuery code needs to be switch with jQuery
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Navigation
• combination of hard code
• wp_list_pages functions
• pageMash
• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pagemash/
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API Key
• http://en.wordpress.com/api-keys/
• WordPress.com has what’s called “API keys” which allow you to use services like Akismet and WordPress.com Stats built on the WordPress.com platform. This allows you to leverage the power of WordPress.com while still hosting your blog elsewhere.
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How do I get a API key
• For Akismet users: They have free keys and commercial keys available.
• For all other services: When you sign up for a WordPress.com account we will email you an API key. If you already have a WordPress.com account, your API key is listed on your profile page, which you can get to by clicking the “My Account” link in the top left when you’re logged in.
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Work Smarter not Harder
• Newsletter system - MailchimpCompletely Free AccountStore up to 500 subscribersSend up to 3,000 emails a monthhttp://www.mailchimp.com/
• Even works with eventbritehttp://www.mailchimp.com/campaign/eventbrite/home
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How to Get Involved with WordPress
IRC chats weekly for every flavor http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=wordpress-ui
mailing list http://codex.wordpress.org/Mailing_Lists
forums http://wordpress.org/support/
wordcamps http://central.wordcamp.org/
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