Book Review - WordPress For Dummies

Book Review by Fiona Angelina
2nd Edition
WordPress
FORDUMMIES
Learn to:
Use the latest upgrades to WordPress
Explore theme development and tweak free WordPress themes
Create a unique blog theme and presentation by using tags with CSS

Book Information
TitleWordPress for Dummies 2nd Edition
Author
Lisa Sabin-Wilson
Publisher
Wiley Publishing, Inc.
Year
2009
Pages
394

Author
Lisa Sabin-Wilson has worked with the WordPress software since 2003.
She has built her business around providing technical support, hosting, and design solutions for bloggers who use WordPress.
She sometimes emerges for public speaking appearances on the topics of design, blogging, and WordPress.
She has also written other Dummies book called “BuddyPress for Dummies”

Content
Part I: Introducing WordPress
Part I gives an overview of WordPress, the advantages of choosing WordPress as the blogging platform. It will also introduce you to the world of blogging.
Part II: Using the WordPress Hosted Service
In Part II, we learn how to use the WordPress Hosted Service. We tour the Administration panel, explore writing and managing your blog, find out how to change the various themes available in this version, and discover how to enhance your blog and widgets.

Content
Part III: Self-Hosting with WordPress.org
Part III explores the single-user version of the WordPress software available at WordPress.org. We explore many of the settings that we need to manage and maintain your WordPress–powered blog.
Part IV: Flexing and Extending WordPressPart IV shows how to add images to our pages, including how to create a photo gallery. This part also reveals how to find, install, and use various WordPressplugins to extend the functionality of your blog. It also steps into the world of WordPress themes.

Content
Part V: Customizing WordPress
Part V takes an in-depth look at the structure of a WordPresstheme. It tells us how to tweak the free theme or even create our own theme. This part also looks at the use of WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS) to power a full-blown Web site as well as a blog.
Part VI: The Part of Tens
Part VI introduces ten Web sites that have really stretched the functionality of WordPressthrough plugins and themes, ten popular free WordPress themes, and ten great WordPressplugins.

Introducing WordPress
This part of the book provides a brief introduction to WordPress and blogging. WordPress is unique in offering three versions of its software. You can choose one of the three versions that suits your needs.

WordPress is blogging made easy — and free!
WordPress offers the following competitive advantages as the most popular blogging tool on the market:
Diversity: WordPress.com, WordPress.org, or WordPress MU
Ease of use and quick setup
Extensibility: plugins and tools for customization
Community of users

What is blog? A blog is a fabulous tool to use to publish your personal diary of thoughts and ideas. Blogs also serve as excellent tools for business, editorial journalism, news, and entertainment.
WordPress is one of the blogging technologies. WordPress software uses PHP and MySQL platform, which allow you to create a blog and publish your own content dynamically, without the need of programming skills.
WordPress gives your blog these features:
Archiving your publishing history.
Interacting with readers through comments
Feeding your readers
Tracking back
Dealing with comments and trackback spam

Using the WordPress Hosted Service
If installing software on a Web server and hosting your
own blog sound like things you’d like to avoid,
WordPress.com may be your answer. In this part of the book, you find out how to get — and use — a free hosted blog from WordPress.com.

WordPress.com offers free bloghosting service which is using WordPress software.
To create a blog, go to http://wordpress.com and do the procedures to sign up a WordPress account.
To start managing your blog, go to My Dashboard. In the dashboard, there are a lot of technical stuffs which are covered completely in the book.
DON’T confuse WordPress.com with the blogging software available for download
at WordPress.org!

To start writing in your blog, go to Administration panel, click the Add New link on the Posts menu to display the Add New Post page.
You can use this editor to write your post. There are two tabs, visual tab and HTML tab. Visual editing mode is how WordPress provides WYSIWYG editor options for formatting.

Front page is the first page which readers see when they visit your blog.
WordPress enables the user to set up the front page.
To set up your front page, click the Reading link in Settings menu.
Settings cover all the stuffs you need to manage your blog, such as your blog title and description, commenting system, privacy, permalink, etc.

Set up your front page as you wish in the Reader Settings.

Theme is your blog’s visual layout and appearance. Theme is used to make your blog more appealing.
In WordPress hosted service, there are several themes available for your blog. To change your theme, click Themes link on the Appearance menu. Choose your favorite theme.

Choose a THEME for your blog to keep it appealing to readers!

Widgets allow you to easily arrange the display content in your blog sidebar.
Examples of widgets:
Recent posts
Blogroll(s)
Category archive lists
Monthly archive lists

WordPress.com offers enhancements called upgrades for a fee. You can purchase credits for them at the cost of USD 1.
Following is a list of the current upgrades you can purchase (prices reflecting annually):
Custom CSS costs 15 credits.
Unlimited Private Users costs 30 credits.
Additional Space costs 20 credits (5GB), 50 credits (15GB), and 90 credits (25GB).
No ads costs 30 credits.

Self-Hosting with WordPress.org
In this part, you dig into the guts of WordPress.org. This part of the book tells you how to get your own domain name and Web host and take you through the installation procedure and features of the Administration panel that you’ll want to know about when getting started.

Before you can start blogging with WordPress.org, you need to establish a domainname and a web hosting to install your WordPress software.
Domain
A domain name is the unique Web addressthat you type in a Web browser’s address bar to visit a Web site. Example: WordPress.com and Google.com.

There are various domain extensions: .com, .net, .org, .biz, or .info.
Registering a domain costs from $3 to $30 depending on what service you use and what options you apply.
Make sure you buy a good domain name. Do a little planning and forethought. Domain can be considered as a brand – a way of identifying Web sites or blogs.
When you BUY a domain name, it doesn’t mean you really OWN it. Rather you purchase the right to use the domain name for specific time. Be aware of the expiring date of your domain!

Web Hosting
A Web host is a business, group, or individual that provides Web server spaceand bandwidth for file transfer to Web site owners who don’t have it.
Usually, Web hosting services charge a monthly or annual fee.
Because you intend to run WordPress on your Web server, you need to look for a host that provides the minimum requirements needed to run the software on your hosting account, which are
✓ PHP version 4.3 (or greater)
✓ MySQL version 4.0 (or greater)

Web hosting services provide two very important things with your account:
✓ Disk space
✓ Bandwidth transfer
Disk space is the amount of files you’re allowed to upload on your Web host.
Bandwidth refers to the amount of data that is carried from point A to point B within a specific period.
To upload files to your Web host, you can use the FTP (File Transfer Protocol) service which is offered by most Web hosts. The use of FTP is “eating” your bandwidth.

To install WordPress, you better satisfy these requirements:
purchased the domain name.
obtained a web hosting.
established your hosting account username, password, and FTP address.
acquired an FTP client for transferring files to your hosting account.
Some web host provide one-click installation process for WordPress. You can simply follow the procedures which is given to install WordPress.

To install WordPress manually, you can follow these procedures:
Download the WordPress software and unpack it.
Set up the MySQL database.
Upload the WordPress files using FTP client.
Run the install script.
Enjoy WordPress-ing! 

Basically the WordPress.org administration panel is the same with WordPress.com, but it offers more flexibilities, such as installing and editing themes, and installing and editing plugins.

Flexing and Extending WordPress
This part of the book tells you how to add media files — images, video, and audio — to your site to create a fun, interactive experience for your readers. This part also covers using WordPressplugins to extend the capabilities of your blog, and using themes.

Adding images and photos to your posts can really dress up the content. They give your content a dimension that you can’t express in plain text.
The same goes for adding video and audio files to your posts and blog.
To ease yourself in managing media and to offer greater features on your blog, you can install several plugins.

Useful Galleryplugins:
NextGEN Gallery by Alex Rabe
Organizer by Imthiaz
Random Image widget by Marcel Proulx
Mini-Slides by Roland Rust
Useful Videoplugins:
wordTube by Alex Rabe
Smart YouTube by Vladimir Prelovac
WP-Vidavee by Vidavee Labs
Video Embedder by Kristoffer Forsgren

Useful Audioplugins:
Audio Player by Martin Laine
1 Bit Audio Player by Mark Wheeler
Podcasting by Ronald Heft, Jr.

A pluginis a small program that, when added to WordPress, interacts with the software to provide some extensibility to the software.
Few examples of things that plugins let you add to your WordPress blog:
Email notification
Submit your blog to Social networking services
Stats programs

WordPress.org allows you to use your own theme, or third-party theme.
There are two kinds of third-party WordPress themes:
Free, means you don’t have to pay anything to use, or even modify it.
Premium, means you have to pay several amount of money. Generally, the designer link are not allowed to be removed. You cannot distribute it too.

Customizing WordPress
This part of the book is about digging into WordPress
themes and templates, discovering how to tweak template code so you can change the appearance of your blog.

Creating themes require you to step into the code of the templates.
If you plan to create WordPress themes, you need some basic knowledge of HTML and CSS.
A WordPress theme is a collection of WordPress templates made up of WordPress template tags.
To begin creating themes, you have to understand the structure of a WordPress theme.

The WordPress themes is located on:wp-content/themes.
At minimum, there are five templates:
Stylesheet (style.css)
Header template (header.php)
Main index (index.php)
Sidebar template (sidebar.php)
Footer template (footer.php)
To edit the template, click the Editor link on the Appearance menu to look at the template files within a theme.

Some people find the free theme is not really satisfying, therefore they tweakit.
By tweaking the WordPress theme, you can change the background color; use your own header image; change font styles, colors, and sizes.
To do this, you need the basic knowledge of CSS.

WordPress is not just a blogging platform, but can be used as a CMS (Content Management System).
To create your blog more like Web sites, you can assign your front page into static page.
The next step is to design the front page and tweak it so your blog looks like a Web site rather than a blog.

If you want your blog to be unique compare to the rest, you may consider the option to bring in the professional.
Some of the services available are:
Custom graphic design and CSS styling for your blog
Custom templates
WordPressplugin installation and integration
Custom WordPressplugins
WordPress software installation on your Web server
Upgrades of the WordPress software
Web hosting and domain registration services
Search engine optimization and site marketing
Some bloggers take advantage of the full array of services provided, whereas others use only a handful.

The Part of Tens
The Part of Tens consists of ten fabulous WordPress themes, ten great plugins that you can use to enhance your WordPress blogging, and ten WordPress–powered sites that effectively use WordPress as a CMS.

The Part of Tens
Ten WordPress Web sites used as a CMS:
New Music Nation
AlexKing.org
Mosaic Consulting, Inc.
CSS Collection
b5media
Hot Air
MommyCast
Jane Wilson-Marquis
Weblogs at Harvard Law School
E.WebScapes Design Studio
10
TOP

The Part of Tens
Ten popular WordPressplugins:
WP Print
Subscribe to Comments
ShareThis
All in One SEO Pak
WordPress Mobile Edition
WP-DB-Backup
WP Ajax Edit Comments
cforms II
Google XML Sitemaps
WordPress.com Stats
10
TOP

The Part of Tens
Ten free WordPress themes:
Cutline
Tarski
SandPress
xMark
Stargaze
Revolution Two Themes
iTheme
Redoable
Una
Gridline Lite
10
TOP

Review of the Book
Positive:
The book provides essential skills for “dummies” who want to start blogging using either WordPress.org, or WordPress.com
The language which is used in the book can be understood well by non-programmers.
The author uses communicative language to the readers, so the readers do not feel bored reading the book because of a lot of technical stuff.

Review of the Book
Negative:
The book mentions about WordPress MU, but do not cover it at all. Too bad there is no information about it as I expect this book to be a complete introductory to WordPress.
The book is meant for dummies at WordPress. If you have known all the basic stuff of WordPress, this book is not meant for you. It do not cover the topic of tweaking WordPress too deeply.

Conclusion
This is a really great book to start your WordPress experience, providing you’re a completely dummy.
WordPress is a great tool that makes blogging easy, especially for non-programmers.
WordPress even can be flexed to manage a Web site, where there may be no blog at all.
WordPress also has a great community. They are the loyal users of WordPress. They will help us if we find any difficulties.

End of Presentation
This is the end of presentation “WordPress for Dummies 2nd Edition”.
Thank you for your time and attention  - Fiona

Book Review - WordPress For Dummies

by Fiona Angelina

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