Building a Website The Easy Way With Wordpress

1. Building a Website the easy way with By James Tryon Tuesday, January 26, 2010

2. 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. Tuesday, January 26, 2010

3. 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 Tuesday, January 26, 2010

4. What do you need to run wordpress? 1 - a web host 2 - you need a domain 3 - a little know how PHP version 4.3 or greater MySQL version 4.1.2 or greater Tuesday, January 26, 2010

5. 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 Tuesday, January 26, 2010

6. Cool Facts on WordPress Plugs 8,038/8,058/8,063 Downloads 71,388,637 Themes 1,111/1,114/1,114 Downloads 11,390,735 Tuesday, January 26, 2010

7. Flavors of WordPress .COM .COM | VIP Tuesday, January 26, 2010

8. Making a Plan • Website Host Requirements Checked and Verified http://codex.wordpress.org/Hosting_WordPress • Versions of PHP and MySQL Checked & Verified http://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 Tuesday, January 26, 2010

9. Famous 5-Minute Install 1 - 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. Tuesday, January 26, 2010

10. Create your Data Base Database Name: wordpress Default character set: utf8 Default Collation: utf8_bin Tuesday, January 26, 2010

11. 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/ Tuesday, January 26, 2010

12. Link your User to 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 Tuesday, January 26, 2010

13. Tuesday, January 26, 2010

14. Oh No! what do I do now? Tuesday, January 26, 2010

15. We can do 3 things Tuesday, January 26, 2010

16. We can do 3 things • let wordpress do all the work Tuesday, January 26, 2010

17. We can do 3 things • let wordpress do all the work • Set up the wp-config.php your self Tuesday, January 26, 2010

18. 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 Tuesday, January 26, 2010

19. We’ll Let WordPress Give it a Try Tuesday, January 26, 2010

25. Still have errors? Tuesday, January 26, 2010

26. Still have errors? Why do you hate me! Tuesday, January 26, 2010

27. OK this is a easy fix Tuesday, January 26, 2010

35. Are you sure your ready for this? Tuesday, January 26, 2010

37. First thing’s First, lets change the password to something we can remember Tuesday, January 26, 2010

38. I like "password" Tuesday, January 26, 2010

40. lets take a look at our new WordPress site Tuesday, January 26, 2010

42. Yep - that’s good old "Kubrick" but it's still a blog Tuesday, January 26, 2010

43. Time to start customizing WordPress Tuesday, January 26, 2010

44. Create a new user with administrator rights Tuesday, January 26, 2010

48. logout from your admin account and login as that new user. Tuesday, January 26, 2010

49. logout from your admin account and login as that new user. Then delete the old admin user and all his posts and links. Tuesday, January 26, 2010

50. WHAT! Tuesday, January 26, 2010

51. 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 Tuesday, January 26, 2010

54. Now you have an almost empty site to work on. Tuesday, January 26, 2010

56. Lets start to go through the settings tabs Tuesday, January 26, 2010

57. General Tuesday, January 26, 2010

59. All your basic stuff in here, you can change it as you see fit. I'm ok with it. Tuesday, January 26, 2010

60. Writing Tuesday, January 26, 2010

62. I never change anything on this page. You can set it up to post via e-mail but why Tuesday, January 26, 2010

63. Reading Tuesday, January 26, 2010

65. 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. Tuesday, January 26, 2010

66. 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) Tuesday, January 26, 2010

68. 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 Tuesday, January 26, 2010

70. Privacy • lets you pick if you want search engines see your site. Tuesday, January 26, 2010

72. Permalinks • Pretty urls • /%category%/%post_id%/%postname%/ Tuesday, January 26, 2010

74. Miscellaneous • I leave this alone Tuesday, January 26, 2010

76. 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 Tuesday, January 26, 2010

80. 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 Tuesday, January 26, 2010

83. Install, Activate and Configure Plugins (most good plugins have very ugly sites) Tuesday, January 26, 2010

85. First off Remove "Hello Dolly" I really like Photo Matt but this plug-in is just dumb Tuesday, January 26, 2010

88. List of plugins we use almost all the time All in One SEO Pack • http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/ WP-DB-Backup • http://semperfiwebdesign.com/portfolio/wordpress/wordpress-plugins/all-in-one- • http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/ seo-pack/#more-59 • http://ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup/ contact form 7 • backups should be done on the server, but this is also nice to have • http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/ Favatars • http://contactform7.com/ • http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/favatars/ • Simple but flexible. Just another contact form plugin. • http://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/wiki/favatars WordPress.com Stats • A system to show favicon.ico files as avatars: "Favatars". Entire recode by Jeff Minard • http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/ (fixes for 2.5.x by Carlo Perassi). Previous Versions care of: Joen, Paul James, and • Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Matthew. • Requires a WordPress.com API key. WP Favicon Google XML Sitemaps • http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-favicon/ • http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/ • http://geekthegathering.com/wp-favicon-add-a-favicon-to-your-blog/ • http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps- • The "WP Favicon" plugin add a favicon to your site. Most of the themes just forgot to generator/ manage this small but nice feature. • This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines Feed Subscriber Stats like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog. • http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/feed-subscriber-stats/ Akismet • http://www.allancollins.net/368/feed-subscriber-stats-3/ • http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/akismet/ • This plugin will show the number of subscribers according to FeedBurner. • http://akismet.com/ Subscribe to Comments • 14,163,866,845 spams caught so far • http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/subscribe-to-comments/ 10,256,853 so far today • http://txfx.net/wordpress-plugins/subscribe-to-comments/ 83% of all comments are spam • Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. Based • (4pm on jan 21st 2010) on version 1 from Scriptygoddess • Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look Wickett Twitter Widget like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the • http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wickett-twitter-widget/ spam it catches under "Comments." To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php • Display Tweets in the sidebar of your blog akismet_counter(); ?> in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin Google Analytics for WordPress • http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/yet-another-related-posts-plugin/ • http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/ • http://mitcho.com/code/yarpp/ • http://yoast.com/wordpress/google-analytics/ • Returns a list of related entries based on a unique algorithm for display on your blog and • This plugin makes it simple to add Google Analytics with extra search engines and RSS feeds. A templating feature allows customization of the display. automatic clickout and download tracking to your WordPress blog. W3 Total Cache pageMash • http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/ • http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pagemash/ • http://www.w3-edge.com/wordpress-plugins/w3-total-cache/ • http://joelstarnes.co.uk/blog/pagemash/ • 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... Tuesday, January 26, 2010

94. Creating a Static Page • Lets start by creating a basic page in WordPress. We will call it home. Tuesday, January 26, 2010

97. Install a new theme • http://getk2.com/ • Supports Child themes • http://code.google.com/p/kaytwo/w/list Tuesday, January 26, 2010

99. 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/ Tuesday, January 26, 2010

100. Create a style.css file with the following content: /* Theme Name: your child theme name Theme URI: the-theme's-homepage Description: a-brief-description Author: your-name Author URI: your-URI Template: 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 Tuesday, January 26, 2010

102. A child theme needs • style.css • screenshot.jpg • what ever files you want to overwrite Tuesday, January 26, 2010

104. 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 */ ?> Tuesday, January 26, 2010

106. 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 Tuesday, January 26, 2010

109. 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 Tuesday, January 26, 2010

111. 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 Tuesday, January 26, 2010

114. Extra Folders • I like to create basic folders in the root of my site: • js • img • flash Tuesday, January 26, 2010

116. 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 Tuesday, January 26, 2010

117. Navigation • combination of hard code • wp_list_pages functions • pageMash • http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ pagemash/ Tuesday, January 26, 2010

118. 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. Tuesday, January 26, 2010

119. 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. Tuesday, January 26, 2010

120. Work Smarter not Harder • Newsletter system - Mailchimp Completely Free Account Store up to 500 subscribers Send up to 3,000 emails a month http://www.mailchimp.com/ • Even works with eventbritehttp:// www.mailchimp.com/campaign/eventbrite/ home Tuesday, January 26, 2010

121. 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/ Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Building a Website The Easy Way With Wordpress

Easily Amused, Inc. & The WP Valet

Building a Website The Easy Way With Wordpress