This document provides an overview of building and maintaining WordPress sites. It discusses WordPress fundamentals like posts, pages, taxonomies, menus, widgets, and custom fields. It also covers themes, plugins, and common issues like plugin bloat and unoptimized images. The document recommends plugins and themes to use and provides tips for customizing WordPress through the customizer and child themes.

1. WORDPRESS SITE
BUILDING BASICS
Jeff McNear
• https://plasterdog.com
• https://webprosmeetup.org/
• jeff@plasterdog.com
• 847/849-7060
• Focus on building customized
WordPress installations & custom
themes
• Building & repairing WordPress sites
since before WordPress 3.0
• Have significant exposure to Joomla,
Drupal, PHP Fusion, ZenCart … and
some others

2. It’s best to know how a thing works before
you start to modify it …

3. OPEN SOURCE CMS

4. WORDPRESS

5. WORDPRESS

6. CORE CODE IS AUGMENTED
VIA MODULE COMPONENTS:

7. OVERALL FILE STRUCTURE:

8. NON CORE FILES ARE IN
WP-CONTENT

9. THEME STRUCTURE

10. THE THEME DEFINES A
CONSISTENT LAYOUT

11. WORDPRESS STRUCTURE:

12. PAGES:
• Stand-alone content
• More likely to have
alternative templates
• Can have parent/child
relationship
• No relevant taxonomies

13. POSTS:
• Two associated
taxonomies: categories &
tags
• May have alternative
templates as well
• Themes contain template
configurations for
taxonomy archives
• Content can be shown in a
dynamic way

14. TAXONOMIES:
CATEGORIES
• Can be hierarchical
• Multiple selections allowed
• Unique archive template(s)
TAGS
• No hierarchy
• Multiple selections allowed
• Unique archive template(s)
• Often incorrectly used

15. MENUS:
=> Appearance
=> Menus
• Can be assigned by region
or via widget
• Any existing content or
archive is selectable
• Theme controls the
behavior and styling

16. WIDGETS:
=> Appearance
=> Widgets
• Many default options
• Plugins will often add
their own widget
• The Theme defines the
widget regions

17. MEDIA:
=> Media
• Any uploaded file is
considered media
• Images are rendered into
three sizes upon upload
• Default behavior is to
structure files into folders
defined by month
• A good naming
convention can be crucial

18. SITE NAME & TAGLINE:
=> Settings
=> General
• Important for SEO even if
the theme doesn’t show
the fields on the “front
end”

19. READING SETTINGS:
=> Settings
=> Reading
• Determines the landing
page
• Determines whether the
site is exposed to indexing
• Determines the number
of posts shown in an
archive

20. PERMALINK SETTINGS:
=> Settings
=> Permalinks
• In most cases “post
name” is preferred
• Changing this after site
launch could cause SEO
issues

21. DISCUSSION SETTINGS:
=> Settings
=> Discussion
• If you aren’t encouraging
comments, shut things
down
• If comments are allowed
moderate them
• Akismet is crucial

22. MEDIA SETTINGS:
=> Settings
=> Media
• Default sizes usually are
just fine
• If you change them after
the site is launched you
will need the “regenerate
thumbnails” plugin

23. USER PERMISSIONS:
=> Users
• By default user
permissions define
editorial permissions
• The “subscriber” role
allows validated user to
see “private” content

24. DEFAULT USER LEVELS:
• Administrator – somebody who has access to all the
administration features within a single site.
• Editor – somebody who can publish and manage posts
including the posts of other users.
• Author – somebody who can publish and manage
their own posts.
• Contributor – somebody who can write and manage
their own posts but cannot publish them.
• Subscriber – somebody who can only manage their
profile.

25. THE GUTENBERG EDITOR:

26. COMMON BLOCKS:
• Paragraph
• Image
• Heading
• Gallery
• List
• Quote
• Audio
• Cover
• File
• Video

27. FORMATTING BLOCKS:
• Code
• Classic
• Custom HTML
• Preformatted
• Pullquote
• Table
• Verse

28. LAYOUT BLOCKS:
• Button
• Columns
• Group
• Media & Text
• More
• Page Break
• Seperator
• Spacer

29. WIDGET BLOCKS:
• Shortcode
• Archives
• Calendar
• Categories
• Latest Comments
• Latest Posts
• RSS
• Search
• Tag Cloud

30. EMBED BLOCKS:
• Embed
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Facebook
• Instagram
• WordPress
• SoundCloud
• Spotify
• Flickr
• Vimeo
• Animoto
• Cloudup
• Crowdsignal
• DailyMotion
• Hulu
• Imgur
• Issuu
• Kickstarter
• Meetup
• Mixcloud
• Reddit
• and on and
on…

31. BLOCK CONTROLS:
For each block there are controls
found in the right column which
allows further modification of the
contents of that block.
Advanced controls allow for a class to
be attached to the block.

32. MORE BLOCK CONTROLS
Blocks can be re-
positioned either by
clicking and dragging (via
6 dot icon) or the up and
down arrows.
Some blocks will have
controls in the block
region as well as in the
right column

33. WORDPRESS DATA STRUCTURE:

34. DEFAULT FIELDS:
PRIMARY SECONDARY TERTIARY
Title
Content
Excerpt
Author
Post Date
Comments
Publication Status
Featured Image
Post Type
Comment Status
Comment Count
Ping Status
Modified Date
Menu Order
Post Password

35. COMMON THEME TEMPLATES:
PRIMARY SECONDARY TERTIARY
Index
Page
Post
Header
Footer
Sidebar
Archive
Category
Tag Archive
Featured Image
Alternate Page Templates
Alternate Post Templates

36. DYNAMIC CONTENT:
Extracting content via queries:
• Home/Landing pages
• Archive Arrays
• Search Results

37. EXTENDING FUNCTIONALITY:

38. PLUGIN TYPES:
As of 1/14/2020 there are 55,287 plugins on
wordpress.org
• FORMS
• CALENDARS
• E-COMMERCE
• SEO
• BACKUPS
• SECURITY
• CACHING
• EXTENDING FIELDS

39. CHOOSING A PLUGIN:
PAY ATTENTION TO:
• How current is the plugin
• Is it in compliance with
WordPress core
• Read both the good and bad
reviews
• How popular is the plugin

40. HOW IS SUPPORT HANDLED:

41. RECOMMENDED PLUGINS:
COMMENT FILTERING
Akismet https://wordpress.org/plugins/akismet/
FORMS
Contact Form 7 https://wordpress.org/plugins/contact-form-7/
Ninja Forms https://wordpress.org/plugins/ninja-forms/
EVENTS
Events Calendar https://wordpress.org/plugins/the-events-calendar/
All in One Calendar https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-event-calendar/
E-COMMERCE
WooCommerce https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce/
EDD https://wordpress.org/plugins/easy-digital-downloads/
SEO
Yoast SEO https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/
All in One SEO https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

42. BACKUPS
Updraft https://wordpress.org/plugins/updraftplus/
Duplicator: https://wordpress.org/plugins/duplicator/
IMAGE CONTROL
Smush https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-smushit/
EWWW https://wordpress.org/plugins/ewww-image-optimizer/
SECURITY
Wordfence https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordfence/
All in One https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-wp-security-and-firewall/
CACHING
W3 Total Cache https://wordpress.org/plugins/w3-total-cache/
Lite Speed Cache https://wordpress.org/plugins/litespeed-cache/
EXTENDING FIELDS
ACF https://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-custom-fields/
PODS https://wordpress.org/plugins/pods/

43. CHOOSING A THEME:

44. SHOWCASE THEMES FROM
WORDPRESS.ORG:
Almost every year the
WordPress Project
releases a new core
theme which showcases
the latest developments
in core.
These themes work well
with the child-theming
process

45. ASSESS THEMES LIKE PLUGINS:
PAY ATTENTION TO:
• How current is the theme
• Is it in compliance with
WordPress core
• Read both the good and bad
reviews
• How popular is the theme

46. HOW IS SUPPORT HANDLED:
Many of the most popular themes on
the repository will be supported by the
general community … not necessarily
the plugin authors

47. “PREMIUM THEMES”:
To be accepted into the
Wordpress.org repository a
theme needs to pass
vigorous standards.
Premium Theme sources
Set their own standards

48. THEME MODIFICATION:

49. CUSTOMIZER:
 Appearace
 Customizer
Controls will vary based on the theme.
Additional CSS Panel allows for CSS overrides

50. CHILD THEME:
https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/advanced-topics/child-themes/#how-to-create-a-child-theme
What is a Parent Theme?
A parent theme is a complete theme which includes all of the required WordPress template
files and assets for the theme to work.
What is a Child Theme?
A child theme inherits the look and feel of the parent theme and all of its functions, but can
be used to make modifications to any part of the theme. In this way, customizations are kept
separate from the parent theme’s files. Using a child theme lets you upgrade the parent
theme without affecting the customizations you’ve made to your site.
How to Create a Child Theme
1. Create a child theme folder
2. Create a stylesheet: style.css
3. Enqueue stylesheet

51. BASELINE THEMES:
A baseline theme has all the elements you need, but will generally be unusable until you
modify them:
https://underscores.me/
“a theme meant for hacking with ultra-minimal CSS - less stuff to get in your way”
https://themble.com/bones/
“built around the latest in Web Standards, Bones is a rock solid foundation to start any
WordPress project”
http://html5blank.com/
“an open source boilerplate theme for WordPress”

52. TYPICAL ISSUES SEEN:

53. PLUGIN BLOAT:
• Only one plugin per function
• Plugins with a finite purpose
• Un-Supported Plugins
• Premium Plugins with expired licenses

54. CONTENT ORGANIZATION:
• Pages should be used sparingly
• Posts should be organized in a logical category
manner
• Many site authors over-use tags
• Orphan drafts and abandoned content should
be deleted
• Media files should have a logical naming
convention

55. IMAGE FILE SIZE:
While WordPress does resize images into four sizes (thumbnail, medium,
medium large, large) upon upload, optimizing before upload is still crucial:
FREE IMAGE OPTIMIZATION TOOLS:
https://www.gimp.org/
tools needed for high quality image manipulation
https://squoosh.app/
Compress and compare images with different codecs, right in your browser.
https://pixlr.com/editor/
runs on flash

56. MAINTAINING YOUR SITE

57. QUESTIONS?
Jeff McNear
• https://plasterdog.com
• https://webprosmeetup.org/
• jeff@plasterdog.com
• 847/849-7060