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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
The easy, self-paced guide to the powerful WordPress platform WordPress 24-Hour Trainer, 3rd Edition provides a comprehensive, unique book-and-video package that focuses on the practical, everyday tasks you will face when creating and maintaining WordPress websites. This easy-to-use, friendly guide will show you how to create and edit pages, integrate your site with social media, keep your site secure, make content more search engine friendly to help drive website traffic, troubleshoot the most common WordPress issues, and much more. This updated edition of WordPress 24-Hour Trainer covers the latest features of WordPress 4.0 and 4.1 in an easy-to-use format: * Fully-illustrated guides to key tasks you'll need to perform with WordPress. * At the end of each lesson a list of related plugins you can install to make WordPress an even more powerful tool. * Step-by-step guides at the end of lessons to help you practice what you just learned. * Videos that show you first hand some of the concepts in each lesson. WordPress 24-Hour Trainer, 3rd Edition is your perfect real-world guide to fully leveraging this powerful platform.
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Seitenzahl: 552
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Who This Book Is For
What This Book Covers
How This Book Is Structured
Instructional Videos
Conventions
Errata
p2p.wrox.com
Section I: Before You Start
Lesson 1: Thinking Like WordPress
Static Versus Dynamic Web Pages
Content Management Systems
Your Role in Making Your Site Flexible
Try It
Lesson 2: Planning Your Site for WordPress
Mapping Out Your Site Content
Special Site Functionality
How You Want the Site to Look
Try It
Section II: Firing Up WordPress
Lesson 3: Installing WordPress
Hosting WordPress
Manually Installing WordPress
Auto-Installing WordPress
When the Installation Is Finished
Try It
Lesson 4: Admin Area Overview
Logging In
Navigating the Admin Area
The Dashboard
Customizing Admin Screens
Getting Comfortable
Try It
Lesson 5: Basic Admin Settings
The Settings Menu
Profile Settings
Try It
Section III: Working with Written Content
Lesson 6: Adding a New Post: An Overview
Navigating to Add a New Post
Adding a New Post
Try It
Lesson 7: Working with Text in the Content Editor
Anatomy of the Content Editor
Working with the Content Editor
Try It
Lesson 8: Basic Post Screen Functions
Publish
Try It
Lesson 9: Advanced Post Functions
Revisions
Excerpt
Custom Fields
Discussion
Comments
Slug
Author
Try It
Lesson 10: Adding a New Page
Pages Versus Posts
Adding a Page
Page Attributes
Order
Try It
Section IV: Working with Media Content
Lesson 11: The Basics of Adding Media Files
Uploading and Inserting an Image into a Post
Uploading an Image to the Media Library
Problems Uploading Media Files
Try It
Lesson 12: The Media Uploader Window
Insert Media
Create Gallery
Set Featured Image
Insert from URL
Try It
Lesson 13: Working with Images in the Content Editor
The Image Details Window
Moving Images
Resizing Images
Design Considerations for Image Placement
Try It
Lesson 14: Using the WordPress Image Editor
The Image Editor Functions
Cropping an Image
Scaling an Image
Controlling WordPress Image Dimensions
Flipping an Image
Try It
Lesson 15: Working with WordPress Image Galleries
Creating an Image Gallery in a Post
More Gallery Options
Try It
Lesson 16: Adding Video and Audio
Video
Audio
Try It
Lesson 17: Adding Documents
Uploading and Inserting a Document
Document File Types
Updating a Document
Try It
Section V: Managing Your Content
Lesson 18: Managing Posts and Pages
Finding Posts and Pages
Using Quick Edit
Using Bulk Actions
Importing Content from Another Site
Admin Settings Affecting Posts and Pages
Try It
Lesson 19: Managing Media Files
The Two Faces of the Media Library
Filtering and Searching the Media Library
Editing and Deleting Media Files
Admin Settings for Media
Try It
Lesson 20: Managing Post Categories and Tags
Managing Categories
Managing Tags
Converting Categories and Tags
Try It
Lesson 21: Managing Widgets and Menus
Widgets and Widget Areas
The WordPress Menu System
Try It
Section VI: Making Your Site Social
Lesson 22: Connecting To Social Media
Helping Visitors Follow You
Letting Visitors Share Your Content
Posting Directly to Social Media
Displaying Social Media Activity
Try It
Lesson 23: Managing Comments
Allow Comments?
Admin Settings for Commenting
Knowing You Have Comments
Approving, Editing, or Deleting Comments
Dealing with Spam Comments
Farming Out Comments
Try It
Lesson 24: Bringing in Content from Other Sites
Adding Content from Third-Party Sites
RSS Feeds
Try It
Lesson 25: Connecting by E-mail
Contacting You by E-mail
Collecting Visitor E-mails
E-mailing Site Updates
Try It
Lesson 26: Managing Multiple Site Users
User Roles and Their Capabilities
Adding a User
Changing a User's Abilities
Users and Security
Try It
Section VII: Choosing and Customizing Themes
Lesson 27: Overview of WordPress Themes
What Is a WordPress Theme?
Choosing a WordPress Theme
Changing Themes
Try It
Lesson 28: Theme Installation and Basic Customization
Installing and Activating a Theme
Built-in WordPress Design Functions
Theme Options
Try It
Lesson 29: Advanced Design Customization
Using Custom CSS
Using a Child Theme
More Ways to Customize
Try It
Section VIII: Becoming Search Engine Friendly
Lesson 30: Optimizing Your Content
Writing Search-Friendly Titles
Writing Search-Friendly Content
Creating Search-Friendly Links
Making Images Search-Friendly
Try It
Lesson 31: Optimizing Behind the Scenes
Optimizing Admin Settings
Meta Tags
Plugins for SEO
Monitoring Site Statistics
Try It
Section IX: Maintenance and Security
Lesson 32: Keeping Up to Date
Updating WordPress
Updating Plugins
Updating Themes
Try It
Lesson 33: Keeping Backups
The Elements of Backing Up
Try It
Lesson 34: Keeping Your Site Secure
Six Steps to Greater WordPress Security
Dealing with Sensitive Data
Secure Hosting
Try It
Section X: Adding Functionality Using Plugins
Lesson 35: Installing and Activating Plugins
What Is a Plugin?
Try It
Lesson 36: More Plugin Suggestions
Plugin Categories
JetPack
Plugins for Other Plugins and Themes
Try It
Section XI: References
Appendix: Troubleshooting WordPress
Site Visible but with an Error Message
Error Establishing a Database Connection
The White Screen of Death
Page Cannot Display
You Cannot Recover Your Password
Finding Help Online
Glossary
Advertisement
End User License Agreement
Pages
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Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Introduction
Section I: Before You Start
Begin Reading
List of Illustrations
Figure 1.1
Figure 1.2
Figure 1.3
Figure 1.4
Figure 2.1
Figure 2.2
Figure 2.3
Figure 2.4
Figure 2.5
Figure 3.1
Figure 3.2
Figure 3.3
Figure 3.4
Figure 4.1
Figure 4.2
Figure 4.3
Figure 4.4
Figure 4.5
Figure 4.6
Figure 4.7
Figure 4.8
Figure 5.1
Figure 5.2
Figure 5.3
Figure 5.4
Figure 5.5
Figure 5.6
Figure 5.7
Figure 5.8
Figure 5.9
Figure 5.10
Figure 5.11
Figure 5.12
Figure 5.13
Figure 5.14
Figure 6.1
Figure 6.2
Figure 6.3
Figure 6.4
Figure 6.5
Figure 6.6
Figure 6.7
Figure 6.8
Figure 6.9
Figure 6.10
Figure 6.11
Figure 6.12
Figure 6.13
Figure 7.1
Figure 7.2
Figure 7.3
Figure 7.4
Figure 7.5
Figure 7.6
Figure 7.7
Figure 7.8
Figure 7.9
Figure 7.10
Figure 7.11
Figure 7.12
Figure 7.13
Figure 7.14
Figure 7.15
Figure 7.16
Figure 7.17
Figure 7.18
Figure 7.19
Figure 7.20
Figure 7.21
Figure 8.1
Figure 8.2
Figure 8.3
Figure 8.4
Figure 8.5
Figure 8.6
Figure 8.7
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Figure 8.9
Figure 8.10
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Figure 8.14
Figure 9.1
Figure 9.2
Figure 9.3
Figure 9.4
Figure 9.5
Figure 9.6
Figure 9.7
Figure 9.8
Figure 9.9
Figure 10.1
Figure 10.2
Figure 10.3
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Figure 11.1
Figure 11.2
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Figure 11.13
Figure 11.14
Figure 11.15
Figure 12.1
Figure 12.2
Figure 12.3
Figure 12.4
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Figure 12.6
Figure 12.7
Figure 12.8
Figure 12.9
Figure 12.10
Figure 12.11
Figure 12.12
Figure 12.13
Figure 12.14
Figure 12.15
Figure 12.16
Figure 12.17
Figure 12.18
Figure 13.1
Figure 13.2
Figure 13.3
Figure 13.4
Figure 13.5
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Figure 13.9
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Figure 13.13
Figure 14.1
Figure 14.2
Figure 14.3
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Figure 14.7
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Figure 14.9
Figure 15.1
Figure 15.2
Figure 15.3
Figure 15.4
Figure 15.5
Figure 15.6
Figure 15.7
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Figure 16.1
Figure 16.2
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Figure 16.6
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Figure 20.1
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Figure 23.2
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Figure 23.5
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Figure 35.4
List of Tables
Table 2.1
Introduction
IN THE FEW SHORT YEARS since the first edition of this book, WordPress has grown to power about 20% of all the websites in the world. This success is not due to some massive marketing campaign; it was mostly viral, as web site owners, designers, developers, and marketers spread the word. And I think they told others because WordPress is:
Easy to set up
Easy to maintain
Easy to grow and adapt
It's this last quality—ease of growing and adapting—which I think is particularly important. WordPress helps make your website future-proof, meaning no matter what happens on the web—new social media platforms, new technologies, new requirements—it allows you to respond pretty easily to those changes.
Since I began building websites exclusively with WordPress, I've noticed an important change in my clients: they look forward to updating and expanding their sites. When changing some text, let alone adding a new page, is like pulling teeth, you're less likely to do it. With WordPress, not only are my clients making their own changes, but they're excited about it and that's also made them more involved in their sites. Instead of having a site built and then sitting back, my clients are actively thinking about what they can change or add to make their sites better, because they can go in and do it themselves when the thought strikes.
That's the real power of WordPress: putting more control in the hands of the website owner.
But WordPress won't magically build a great site for you. It's only a tool that makes it easier for you to build a great site. You need to know how to use WordPress, as well as understand its potential, so you can use the tool most effectively. This book will help you with both.
Who This Book Is For
This book is for beginners at two levels: those who've never built a website and those who've never built or used a WordPress website. You should be aware that there are two versions of WordPress:
The free hosted version at
WordPress.com
The open-source downloadable version from
WordPress.org
, which you then install on your own server (commonly referred to as the self-hosted version)
The important difference between the two is that with the hosted version you don't control which plugins or themes are available to use. For personal blogging or, with some paid features, even some small businesses, the hosted version can be a good choice. But for complete control or customization of your site, the self-hosted version is the better choice.
Though this book deals with the self-hosted version of WordPress, much of it—how to enter content, how to upload photos and documents, how to lay out content, and so on—still applies to the hosted version.
What This Book Covers
Since the second edition of this book, WordPress has undergone significant changes, all of which make it even easier to use and even more flexible for managing any type of website. This new edition includes features up to and including Version 4.0, with indications of some changes expected in 4.1.
You'll learn how to set up a WordPress website from scratch, using the default features of the software. Each lesson covers a related set of tasks, so you can follow the lessons in order or easily dip into any one of them to quickly learn one thing. Because we're in an increasingly mobile world, the book also covers important differences when using WordPress on a mobile device. And at the end of most lessons there will be a list of free plugins that extend the functions discussed in that lesson.
Keep in mind, this book is not what I call an extended manual. It does not aim to cover every feature of WordPress. Instead, it focuses on the key tasks you need in the day-to-day running of a website, and covers them in great detail. I do that by showing you not just the basics, but the tips and tricks that make things as simple as possible. The addition of videos for key points helps make things clearer and reinforce the concepts.
How This Book Is Structured
The 36 lessons are grouped into themed sections:
Section I: Before You Start
—Get to know how WordPress thinks about content and what planning you need to do before starting your site.
Section II: Firing Up WordPress
—Instructions for installing the software, an overview of the administration interface, and the basic settings you'll need to get going.
Section III: Working with Written Content
—Entering your content and publishing it.
Section IV: Working with Media Content
—The ins and outs of uploading images, video, documents, and more, as well as how to use them on your site.
Section V: Managing Your Content
—Navigating through various types of content, editing it, and moving it around.
Section VI: Making Your Site Social
—Dealing with social media, comments, links, RSS feeds, and multiple users.
Section VII: Choosing and Customizing Themes
—How to choose from the astonishing array of themes, and some basics for making the site look exactly the way you want.
Section VIII: Becoming Search Engine–Friendly
— Keeping an eye on your site statistics, and basic techniques for optimizing your site so that you get indexed in the best possible way.
Section IX: Maintenance and Security
—Making sure your software is up to date, and getting into good backup habits.
Section X: Added Functionality Using Plugins
—Using plugins that give WordPress new features, such as e-commerce, events calendars, and much, much more.
When you're finished reading the book and watching the videos online, you'll find lots of support in the p2p forums, as you'll see in a moment, but there's also the WordPress community on the Web. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world are using this software, and a lot of them give back in so many ways. It's a spirit that's reflected in the quality of WordPress and its continued improvement.
From the people who created and maintain WordPress, to the people who make plugins and themes, to the people who write about WordPress on their blogs or contribute to the official and unofficial forums, there are thousands of bright minds giving back to the community with code, ideas, fixes, and more. You never have to feel you're alone when you're using WordPress. I like to think of it as a worldwide 24-hour help line. Whether you need help or can offer help, you're welcome any time.
Instructional Videos
Nothing beats watching how something is done, and that's why I've provided several hours' worth of video about how you can use WordPress. Most lessons in the book have an accompanying video which not only illustrates several of the examples in the lesson, but goes well beyond what can be covered in print. You'll also gain more insight into the creation of the sample website discussed in the book: Island Travel.
If you have an existing WordPress site—a self-hosted version or a blog on WordPress.com—I encourage you to work along in the admin screen. If you don't have a site, you could install WordPress if you have a web hosting account (see Lesson 3) or you could open an account with WordPress.com. The main thing is that you be able to practice what's covered in the book and on these videos, which can be viewed at www.wrox.com/go/sp2010-24.
Also online you'll find a PDF with links to each of the more than 400 plugins mentioned in the book. You can find the plugins under the lesson where they were mentioned. Click on a link and you'll be taken to the listing in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory.
Conventions
To help you get the most from the text and keep track of what's happening, we've used a number of conventions throughout the book.
WARNINGBoxes like this one hold important, not-to-be-forgotten information that is directly relevant to the surrounding text.
NOTENotes, tips, hints, tricks, and asides to the current discussion are presented in boxes like this.
PLUGINS
At the end of virtually all the lessons, you'll find a box like this with a list of plugins from the WordPress Plugin Directory related to the topics of that lesson. Commercial plugins are not covered here, with the occasional exception.
REFERENCEReference References like this one point you to the website atwww.wrox .com/go/wp24vidsto watch the instructional video that accompanies a given lesson.
As for styles in the text:
We
highlight
new terms and important words when we introduce them.
We show URLs and code within the text like so:
persistence.properties
.
Errata
We make every effort to ensure that there are no errors in the text or in the code. However, no one is perfect, and mistakes do occur. If you find an error in one of our books, like a spelling mistake or faulty piece of code, we would be very grateful for your feedback. By sending in errata, you may save another reader hours of frustration and, at the same time, you will be helping us provide even higher quality information.
To find the errata page for this book, go to www.wrox.com and locate the title using the Search box or one of the title lists. Then, on the Book Search Results page, click the Errata link. On this page, you can view all errata that has been submitted for this book and posted by Wrox editors.
NOTENote A complete book list, including links to errata, is also available atwww.wrox.com/misc-pages/booklist.shtml.
If you don't spot “your” error on the Errata page, click the Errata Form link and complete the form to send us the error you have found. We'll check the information and, if appropriate, post a message to the book's errata page and fix the problem in subsequent editions of the book.
p2p.wrox.com
For author and peer discussion, join the P2P forums at p2p.wrox.com. The forums are a web-based system for you to post messages relating to Wrox books and related technologies and interact with other readers and technology users. The forums offer a subscription feature to e-mail you topics of interest of your choosing when new posts are made to the forums. Wrox authors, editors, other industry experts, and your fellow readers are present on these forums.
At p2p.wrox.com, you will find a number of different forums that will help you not only as you read this book, but also as you develop your own applications. To join the forums, just follow these steps:
Go to
p2p.wrox.com
and click the Register link.
Read the terms of use and click Agree.
Complete the required information to join, as well as any optional information you wish to provide, and click Submit.
You will receive an e-mail with information describing how to verify your account and complete the joining process.
NOTEYou can read messages in the forums without joining P2P, but in order to post your own messages, you must join.
Once you join, you can post new messages and respond to messages other users post. You can read messages at any time on the Web. If you would like to have new messages from a particular forum e-mailed to you, click the Subscribe To This Forum icon by the forum name in the forum listing.
For more information about how to use the Wrox P2P, be sure to read the P2P FAQs for answers to questions about how the forum software works as well as many common questions specific to P2P and Wrox books. To read the FAQs, click the FAQ link on any P2P page.
Section IBefore You Start
Lesson 1: Thinking Like WordPress
Lesson 2: Planning Your Site for WordPress
Lesson 1Thinking Like WordPress
WordPress provides you with the tools to create, organize, and update your website content. Those tools function in specific ways, just as one type of word processing software has its specific buttons for creating, say, lists. But there's a difference between knowing which button to press to create a list and thinking about ways to use lists in your documents. That's what this lesson is about: learning to think like WordPress so that you can build or rebuild your website in an efficient and flexible manner from the start, and to use it in new and useful ways.
The driving principle behind this way of thinking is: Store everything in the smallest possible piece; then assemble as needed. It's the way of the digital world—photographs assembled out of pixels, data stored in database fields, or video recorded in bytes. WordPress operates with this kind of thinking, and you can make better use of its power if you think of your website and its content in this way.
Static Versus Dynamic Web Pages
If you right-click while viewing a page in your web browser, you'll see a tool called View Source, which displays the HTML of the page you're currently viewing. If you try this tool, it appears as though you're viewing a single file, but for most websites today, that's an illusion. In most cases there is no corresponding file sitting on a web server. Instead, the server has combined dozens and dozens of files in a split second to create what you're seeing with View Source.
That was not the case in the early days of the Internet, when most web pages were stored as single HTML files. The fact that no assembly was required to produce the code you see in your browser is why they are called static files. They're easy to create and they load quickly (an important factor at a time when computers and Internet speeds were slow), but they aren't flexible. Suppose you decided to change the logo at the top of each of your website's pages, and it had a new file name. With static files, you would need to manually go in and replace the HTML in every file. Not so bad on a 5-page site, but what if you had 5,000 pages? Yes, there's such a thing as search-and-replace functions in HTML editors, but aside from the fact that methods like that are not user-friendly, they solve only one limitation of static files. Suppose you wanted an entirely different header area depending on what part of your site the visitor is on?
The answer is to break up the structure of web pages in such a way that different files control different parts of the final page. So instead of storing web pages as single files, the server would store a series of files that are then assembled into a single file at the moment the page is requested by someone's browser. It is this assembly process that leads us to refer to these types of web pages as dynamic. Figure 1.1 shows one way to split up a static HTML file.
Figure 1.1
Notice in Figure 1.1 that the only file that would be unique to this particular web page is content html. The rest of the files—header, footer, and so on—would be shared by the other pages on the site. So changing that logo for 5,000 pages would simply be a matter of changing the header.html file. If you can start thinking of your web pages in this way—as a set of parts that can be assembled on-the-fly in different ways—you're more likely to think of ways to use this ability to your advantage.
For example, it could be that the actual content of a web page (the material in content.html in Figure 1.1) might be broken down further to allow for greater flexibility. News stories, press releases, or testimonials are good instances of this kind of content. Using testimonials as an example, you can see in Figure 1.2 how dynamic web page thinking could be applied:
Figure 1.2
Although the value of dynamic web pages is obvious, the concept is not of much use to website owners unless the files required to run them are easy to manage. You could build a dynamicwebsite—even a sophisticated one—with just a set of simple text files. But that would require the website manager to know HTML and other assorted languages, and to be comfortable working with tools such as file transfer programs. Moving those simple text files into a database to increase their flexibility only further complicates the work of the website manager. Enter the content management system, or CMS.
Content Management Systems
Most of us tend to think of a CMS merely as a way to avoid having to learn HTML, but editing the text and media on a web page is just a part of what a CMS does. A content management system is a user interface for dynamic web pages.
Imagine for a moment you had a CMS that provided only a WYSIWYG interface for the full HTML of each individual web page. If you had a 5-page website that rarely changed, that might be enough. But suppose, even on a 5-page website, that you decided you didn't like the top section or header that appears on all the pages of your site. Yes, the CMS makes it easy to drag and drop a new graphic into the header area of the pages, but you'd still need to change the graphic on all 5 pages separately. Now imagine that task on a site with 500 pages or 5,000! Even with search-and-replace capabilities, you would need to upload all 5,000 pages back onto the server to replace the old version, and then do it all again for the next change. Ouch!
A CMS, however, is much more than a WYSIWYG editor. You want the CMS to keep separate all those elements of a dynamic web page that you saw earlier: the header, footer, sidebar, and so on, and to manage not only their contents, but also how they interact with each other. A CMS instructs the server how to assemble any particular web page based in part on elements you control using its interface.
From the look of the page to which sidebar elements to include, a CMS provides ways for nontechnical users to control their web pages. The question then becomes: Does your CMS offer a lot of control and an easy-to-use interface?
Why Choose WordPress?
There's no shortage of content management systems these days—good ones—but the reason for choosing WordPress as your CMS is twofold:
The simplicity and flexibility of WordPress's design make it easy to learn, easy to expand, and easy to customize.
The WordPress community is so large and so vibrant that you have a huge number of add-on functions and designs to choose from, as well as excellent support, and will have for years to come.
It's important to keep in mind that no CMS can fulfill everyone's needs right out-of-the-box. The more a CMS tries to be all things to all people, the more bloated it becomes, and that means a steeper learning curve and a greater chance it will break down. A good CMS follows the principles of digital thinking and keeps as many elements separate as possible, meaning each one is fairly simple but when assembled offers great power.
WordPress is built on this principle. The core software does only basic functionality, to which you then easily add other functions as you need them or remove them when you don't. The look of WordPress is entirely separate from the core software, so it, too, is easily changed. And all these elements outside the core can be modified or new ones can be created to match your exact needs.
But even the best CMS is only as useful as the community that supports it, and WordPress has community. Whether there is someone building new add-on functionality, offering advice in forums and blog posts, or selling development services, WordPress is the most-supported CMS on the planet.
How WordPress Assembles Pages
Part of thinking like WordPress is having a general grasp of how it works. There are four elements of WordPress that interact to create HTML pages: the core files, the theme files, plugin files, and the database.
The core is the set of files that you download from WordPress.org that provide not only the basic functionality, but also the coordination between all the other elements.
The theme files have two key functions: Provide the set of HTML files that assemble the final web pages, and control the design of those pages.
Plugins are groups of files that add more functionality to WordPress. Some plugins consist of a single file, whereas others can have dozens or even hundreds.
The database has several functions. It keeps track of all the parameters of your WordPress installation, from which themes and plugins you have to the preferences of each individual user. It also stores the text portion of your content. When you write a blog post, for example, it is stored in the database, along with any references to media files, which are stored in folders on the server.
Figure 1.3 shows a simple diagram of how these four elements interact.
Figure 1.3
The arrows going back and forth between the elements begin to demonstrate the incredible amount of interaction required to generate a web page in a matter of seconds. The number of requests or queries made to the database averages approximately 40 or 50 for a typical WordPress page. Dynamic web pages are not cheap. They can place a heavy load on server resources if a lot of people try to access the site at one time. That's why many sites use a caching system with their CMS, which means that snapshots are taken of each page and stored as single, static HTML pages, avoiding all the back and forth between files and the database. The caching system keeps track if any changes are made to a page and takes a new snapshot as needed. That way you have the advantages of both dynamic page generation and static page serving.
The advantages of keeping these four elements of WordPress separate are many. Changing the look of your site is as simple as changing the theme. If a plugin starts causing problems for your site, you simply remove it and plug in a new one. If a new social media platform becomes the next big thing, someone will come up with a plugin to interact with it—or you can have your own made. When WordPress needs updating, your site's options and preferences remain untouched in the database. And if your host gives you poor service, you just copy all the files and the database, and move them to a new server.
But, although WordPress by its nature as a CMS and through its particular design produces dynamic web pages, its built-in tools can go only so far. Sites using WordPress can be more or less dynamic in nature depending on how the user works with WordPress's tools. Some of the power and flexibility in your site comes down to you.
Your Role in Making Your Site Flexible
As mentioned earlier, a good CMS needs to have a simple user interface, and WordPress lives up to this requirement. Actually, it was that ease of use that first led me to use WordPress on my clients' sites. Even as it has grown more complex, the developers of WordPress have continually worked to keep the interface user-friendly.
The menu system, for example, enables an unlimited number of menus; each can handle dozens and dozens of menu items with multiple levels of drop-downs, and those menu items can be virtually any type of content within WordPress: pages, posts, categories, tags, and more. Yet, as you can see in Figure 1.4, all this complexity is handled with simple check boxes, drag-and-drop interfaces, and drop-down selections.
Figure 1.4
But with great power comes great responsibility. You're the one who has to create a useful and easy-to-follow navigation system for your users; WordPress cannot do that for you. It just makes it easy for you to do the creating. The more you can understand what's possible with WordPress, the better you'll become at making use of its powerful tools to create the best website for your visitors.
Understanding the difference between two ways of handling content in WordPress is particularly important to making your site easier for you to use and more useful to your visitors, and that is the difference between posts and pages.
Posts and pages share a lot of similarities, in particular the way their user interfaces or, in WordPress terminology, their admin screens work (which means there are many functions you'll have to learn only once). Where they differ brings you to the heart of the principle in this lesson: Store everything in the smallest possible pieces.
Take testimonials. For many websites it is absolutely crucial to have testimonials from satisfied customers or clients. So you grab those e-mails and letters people have written praising your services and you open up WordPress. You want a web page of all those testimonials, so under Pages in the WordPress menu, you select New Page. The WYSIWYG editor makes it easy to copy the text over from your e-mail or Word document, add any extra formatting, and get the page looking nice indeed.
Fast forward 6 months, and you decide that you would like to group some of the testimonials onto another web page because they all relate to a particular service. Not so bad; you just copy the text of the page, create a new WordPress page, paste it in, and then delete the testimonials you don't need. Then a month later you get a new testimonial that belongs on both pages. You copy and paste into both. But suppose you have several categories of testimonials; you can see how this could get both tedious and complex to manage.
Remember earlier in this lesson the diagram of the testimonials page (refer to Figure 1.2) and how you might break it up instead into individual testimonials? Well that's what posts in WordPress are for: groups of related content that you can categorize. That's all we mean when we talk about a blog: groups of similar content. So now, instead of putting all the testimonials in a WordPress page, you can create a category of posts called Testimonials and enter individual testimonials as posts, assigning them to that category. Then put the category on your site menu, and when visitors click that link, WordPress gathers all the relevant posts and outputs them as a single web page.
Fast forward 6 months again and you decide you need a category of testimonials for a particular service. Just create a subcategory of Testimonials called, say, Workshop Testimonials. Through an easy WordPress interface, you can assign 2, 20, or 200 testimonials to that new category with a single click. Then you just put the Workshop Testimonials on your menu or create a link to the category wherever you want. When visitors click, they see only testimonials about your workshop.
By keeping those testimonials individual, the possibilities are endless. Need rotating testimonials on the front page? Want to feature a particular testimonial on the sidebar of a specific page? It's only possible by keeping them as separate posts. That's the power of thinking like WordPress. In the next lesson you start applying that thinking to a sample site, and throughout this book you see ways to use WordPress's tools to increase the power and flexibility of your site.
NOTEOkay, having just told you how posts and pages differ in WordPress, I use the termpoststhroughout this book to mean both posts and pages. Partly, it's to avoid potential confusion with the term page, but mainly, it's for the sake of simplicity. The way you enter and edit content for posts and pages is basically identical because they both share the majority of content management features. Where necessary, I'll distinguish between them, but unless I do you can assume that when I say posts, I mean both posts and pages.
Try It
There isn't anything specific to try based on the material in this lesson, but one thing you can do is examine your favorite news website, and in the content area of the site, try to image how those pieces of content might be separated in the site's CMS. Then go to another page, compare what's common with the previous page, and try to imagine how the builders have divided up the structure of the page—map it out on paper.
REFERENCEThere is no video to accompany this lesson.
Lesson 2Planning Your Site for WordPress
It's beyond the scope of this lesson to go into the entire planning process for a website. Rather, the goal is to map out a website and plan generally how to implement it in WordPress.
If you're setting up a personal blog, WordPress has done much of the structuring for you, and you could skip to the next lesson, but there's still plenty here that can be of use. For everyone else, this is an important step because with the right kind of planning upfront, not only can you save a lot of time and energy in the future, but it also can help you think about ways to make your website even more useful and easier to navigate.
To build a site in WordPress, you have three key things to consider during the planning process:
What content will you have? (Including areas such as the header and footer)
What special functionality will your site need? (E-commerce, events calendar, and so on)
What do you want the site to look like? (Layout, colors, and so on)
The main focus in this lesson is on the first item—the content—because people have the hardest time with it.
The site used as an example throughout the book is for a company called Island Travel, a small travel agency with two locations, specializing in vacations to the Caribbean. Its primary goal is to have a website that provides a personal touch, with information largely written by its staff, and of course, the company wants it to be as easy as possible to update and expand.
Mapping Out Your Site Content
There are two kinds of maps you'll create for the travel site: a site map and a page map. The first will show every page on the website, and you want them organized. The second is an outline of elements that you want to appear on every page of the site: header, footer, and sidebar, at the end of every article/blog post, or wherever. In either case, “map” can be a bit intimidating, so you'll begin each one with a list.
The Site Map
For your site map, start writing a list of pages you think you might need, or more to the point, pages you think your visitors will want. Don't worry whether you've thought of everything—that will never happen—just write things down as you think of them. Don't do it in one sitting; come back the next day, and the next, and so on.
Here's a list for Island Travel:
Vacation packages—One page per destination, listing all packages for that destination.
Destination guides—One page per island destination, talking about what to see, tips for traveling, and so on.
Supplier pages—One for each supplier of vacation packages, maybe with a list of their packages, if possible?
About Us—A bit of history, our travel philosophy.
Our Team—Short introductions to each of our staff members.
Contact Us—Phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and showing our two locations with maps.
Testimonials—clients happy with our service or their vacation.
Current Specials—temporary travel deals.
A page for our customers—Maybe specials just for them?
A travel blog—Our own travel experiences, travel industry news, and so on.
Notice how every destination or every supplier isn't listed here and some notes to myself are added about what the pages might consist of, even if I'm not sure at this point if I can have what I want.
When you can't think of any other pages for your site, stop and make the first draft of your site map. The best way to think of this map is to picture something we're all familiar with on websites: the navigation menu. A site map, in the end, is the plan for the main menu of your website. It can also get more involved by showing links you want to make directly between pages, but for your purposes here keep things simple.
Speaking of simple, your site map does not need to be anything elaborate. You can hand draw it on a piece of paper or your tablet. Since I'm not much at drawing and you'd never be able to read my writing, I use a presentation program to create my site map such as PowerPoint (Windows) or Keynote (Mac). It can be easier to use than a graphics program or a word processor, but if you're a whiz with Word or some other program, by all means use them.
In Figure 2.1 you can see the site map I created. The top row of boxes shows the visible menu items, and the boxes below them would drop down as visitors mouseover the respective top-level menu item. There's no need to show every possible box, so the arrows indicate more menu items below.
Figure 2.1
Now, keep in mind that this is a plan for the web pages that visitors will see, but as you learned in the previous lesson, what they see is not the same as how it might be organized in a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress.
Of course, you could build the exact structure shown in my site plan using WordPress pages. But remember that example about testimonials? If you just create a single WordPress page and keep adding testimonials to it, you can't do anything more with the individual testimonials. You can't reuse them in any way. But if you enter each one as a post in WordPress, the sky's the limit. Now go back and review the site map from the standpoint of what should be a WordPress page and what should be a post.
Clearly, testimonials need to be entered as individual posts and categorized as testimonials. So what you would have on your site map or menu is a WordPress category and not a page.
It's actually the same thinking that led to the first draft of the site map showing suppliers and destinations as subpages. You could put all the suppliers on a single page, but not only might that make for a large page (not friendly for visitors), it also wouldn't be as flexible, such as having a link to a specific supplier. So, suppliers were broken down into their smallest possible chunks—same as with the vacation destinations. Now that you know a bit about how WordPress works, you can specify how the content should be entered using WordPress structures that make your organizing even more efficient.
Another way to think of this process is to look at content and ask if it can be used in multiple ways throughout the site. If it can be or even if you think it might be in the future, it's better to enter the content as a post.
If the content is one of a kind (there won't be different versions of it) as in the case of About Us, that content should be entered as a WordPress page.
And finally there's another important consideration: Don't be stingy with page or post creation. You can have an unlimited number of WordPress pages or posts. In fact, the more you can break down your content into individual web pages, the better. For the contact page, for example, you can mention your two locations, but then link to a separate page with details about each (photos, staff greetings, map, and so on).
Based on these parameters, now go back and redo the site map. The top row of thick-bordered boxes is what would be visible on the navigation bar of the site; the boxes underneath would drop down from their respective top-level items. Items with gray backgrounds will be categories that display a list of posts, whereas the items with a white background are WordPress Pages. A dashed border indicates a child or sub-page in WordPress. Figure 2.2 shows the finished product.
Figure 2.2
I say finished product, but this site map isn't written in stone. First, you're likely going to think of new content as the site progresses, such as a category for staff picks or a resource page for links to useful websites. Second, you may decide to rearrange the order of items on the map.
As you'll see throughout the book, changing how content is organized is easy with WordPress, but the more you can develop a good, clear plan early, the less likely or the smaller the changes will be in the future.
How to Organize Posts
While creating the site map, you saw how much of the content for the travel site is better as posts rather than WordPress pages. And because posts are organized by categories, the way those categories are set up is another important aspect of planning your WordPress site.
The site map contained numerous category menu items, but exactly how those categories are set up in WordPress remains to be decided. Take the Vacation Packages posts, for example. They could be set up as a main or parent category, as they're called in WordPress, with a set of child categories, one for each destination (Aruba Packages, Bermuda Packages, and so on). Or each destination could be a parent category, with children such as Aruba Packages, Aruba Testimonials, Aruba News, and so on.
A third approach involves the use of tags, another tool in WordPress for grouping posts (such as the index of a book, while categories are the table of contents). By creating a tag for each of your destinations, you can filter categories by that tag. For example, if you have a category called Vacation Packages, you can get a menu item of Aruba Packages by creating a link to Packages and filtering with the Aruba tag. (Don't worry about the details of this; it is covered in detail in Lesson 20, “Managing Post Categories and Tags.”)
Table 2.1 shows how these three approaches play out (parent categories in bold, child categories in regular text, tags in italics).
Table 2.1 Three Approaches to Categorizing
SUBJECT-BASED
TYPE-BASED
TAG FILTERING
Aruba
Testimonials
Individual Destinations
Aruba Packages
Aruba Testimonials
Individual Suppliers
Aruba Testimonials
Sun Worship Testimonials
Packages
Aruba Travel News
Specials
Sun Worship Holidays
Travel News
Testimonials
Sun Worship Packages
Aruba Travel News
Travel News
Sun Worship Testimonials
Sun Worship Travel News
Sun Worship Travel News
At first glance, it might look as if the Subject approach is nicely geared toward what your visitors are most interested in: destinations and their favorite vacation suppliers. But what about flexibility of grouping posts?
Now go back to the example of testimonials for a moment. If you choose the Subject approach, it wouldn't be easy to have a single testimonials page displaying all testimonials at one time. You'd need to figure out some way to gather together the various testimonials categories rather than lettingWordPress's parent-child category structure do the work for you. You would have the same problem if you want to have a random testimonial from the list of all testimonials appear on the site's sidebar; unless they're all under one parent category, there'd be some customization work needed.
With the Type approach, however, not only can you easily have an “all testimonials” page by simply displaying the Testimonials category, you also can link the Sun Worship Holidays testimonials category to the Sun Worship Holidays page. Like the Subject approach, though, it does mean creating a lot of child categories. However, the way categories appear on the posts admin screen makes it much easier for you or your staff to be sure you're accurately placing a post in all the right spots.
The Tag Filtering approach is even more flexible, but it does take a bit more work when entering a new post or creating a menu item. You'll need to remember to use the WordPress tag system, not just categories, and how to create special URLs that filter a category using tags. And don't let Table 2.1 leave you thinking that with Tag Filtering you can't have child categories.
In any of these approaches, remember there's the ability to create child categories of child categories for even greater flexibility. Under the Packages category you could have child categories by price level or type of package (resort versus tour and so on).
So you can see there's a lot to think about for organizing your post content; all of it is influenced by knowing how WordPress works. As you move through the book, the process should become clearer, and you'll start to develop your own ideas. Every site will have different needs, of course, but hopefully this lesson gives you some broad guidelines to create your content organization.
The Page Map
Having mapped out individual web pages for your site, it's time to create a map of common elements you want on all those pages (or sometimes on just a few of them).
Figure 2.3 shows a visual page map, but yours can simply be a list with headings indicating the portion of the page you're talking about.
Figure 2.3
Notice in the sidebar the qualification put on “Destination spotlight of the month.” You don't want to distract visitors with another destination while talking about one destination. Content in any area of the website, not just the sidebar, can be hidden from some pages or only shown on others, so be sure to make notes about that on your page map.
Remember, this map does not need to represent your final site layout; it's about site content outside the main content area. For example, the layout that you choose for Island Travel might have two menus in the header area, which split up the “full site menu,” or you might decide later to move those travel association links into the sidebar. And maybe some of your pages won't have a sidebar.
The key here is to have something in mind as you progress through learning WordPress and creating your site. It will make learning easier and make a better site.
Special Site Functionality
It's now time for another list. You won't need it right away, but it's good to have it as you work your way through this book and through WordPress. It will begin as a list of every function you want your site to perform. As you learn more, you can cross some items off the list until it becomes a list of the things your site needs that WordPress doesn't do. Eventually it will become a list of plugins, the add-on programs that provide WordPress with additional functionality.
For the moment, you just need to write down all the things you think your site needs to do. Following are some examples:
Run a slider on the homepage.
Allow visitors to sign up to your mailing list.
Accept online payments.
Automatically post to Facebook, Twitter, or other social media.
Allow visitors to easily pin your pictures to Pinterest.
Create a pricing table of your services.
Display an events calendar.
Track how many visitors download certain files.
Play video on the site (from YouTube or other sharing sites).
Display galleries of photos.
Track the number of visitors and other statistics.
Create forms.
Have rotating testimonials on the homepage or in the sidebar.
