Getting to Know Wordpress | 3
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A Brief History of WordPress 3 The Community 6 How WordPress Works 10 Where WordPress Runs 14 The Dashboard 18 What Are Posts 21 What Are Pages 24 Media 26 Comments 30 Themes 33 Customizing WordPress Appearance 37 Plugins 41 Users 46 Settings 50 Tips, Tricks, and Tools 61 Outro 65 Getting to Know WordPress | 3 A Brief History of WordPress The goal of this book is two-fold. I’m hoping to give people an introduction to what they get with a brand-spanking-new WordPress website, and improve my own skills at explaining the inner-workings of WordPress. So join me and let’s understand WordPress together. What is WordPress? WordPress can be many things. It’s a blogging platform. It’s a content management system (CMS). It’s an open source software. It’s an ecommerce platform. It’s a social network platform. It’s a web application platform. It’s a service as a software solution (SaaS). And the list goes on. But what is WordPress to you? Chances are if you’re reading this you’re looking to use WordPress to build your website. To you WordPress is a tool you’re using to create a website. Whether it’s a site to sell products, market yourself, or post pictures of your cat in a variety of costumes, WordPress can get it done. Let’s look at how WordPress.org explains WordPress on it’s landing page. “WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website, blog, or app. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.” WordPress certainly isn’t the only tool you can use to build a website, and it also isn’t the only tool you’ll need to accomplish all of your goals. Except for the aforementioned cat costume site. It can handle that right out of the box. Oh yeah, and you may have noticed that “free” line in the description. That word tends to jump off the page at people. WordPress is free to use. It’s an Open Source project maintained by the people that use it. That means there are thousands of developers across the world working to make the WordPress Core software as feature-rich and bug-proof as possible. That’s a big reason why if there is something you want to do in WordPress, chances are someone in the WordPress community has already done it, tested it, documented it, and created the plugin. Who really maintains WordPress? Getting to Know WordPress | 4 Surely with software as sophisticated and complex as WordPress there has to be someone in charge of it. WordPress.org is completely 100% free under a GPL license. You’ll see GPL licenses throughout all kinds of open source software projects. In simplified terms, it is essentially a license that let’s you modify and use software in anyway you please personally or commercially. But you’ve been to WordPress.com and you’ve seen paid options. That’s actually run by a company called Automattic. They were founded by one of WordPress’s founding developers Matt Mullenweg to make the WordPress core software easier to use for the masses. They own and maintain WordPress.com, but they don’t own WordPress.org. Confused yet? Let’s break that down. The Flavors of WordPress As you look into WordPress you’re likely to come across two different versions. The WordPress.com version and the WordPress.org version. WordPress.org is where you can go to download your own copy of the WordPress core software and install it on any web host you choose. This also offers the flexibility to edit it, add themes, add plugins and tweak it to your hearts content. Sound complicated? It can be if you’re not familiar with installing websites on servers and don’t have the desire to learn. Enter WordPress.com. WordPress.com is essentially hosting specifically for vanilla WordPress sites. You can sign up and have a working site in minutes. With the free version your site URL would look something like yourdomain.wordpress.com. The best way to think about it is WordPress.org is self-hosted WordPress. It’s the most feature rich version of the WordPress core software and it’s 100% free. You can take it and repurpose it in anyway for your own fun and profit. WordPress.com is a stripped down version of WordPress limiting your theme and plugin options. WordPress.com was created to offer a quick and easy way to set up a WordPress site and get started blogging. WP Beginner offers a nice comparison of WordPress.org vs a free WordPress.com site. Still want the flexibility of WordPress.org, but don’t want to use WordPress.com. No problem. With the proliferation of WordPress across the internet many hosting providers offer one click installs for WordPress sites. There are even hosting providers that are tuned to run WordPress sites exclusively, which often leads to better overall site performance and security. Getting to Know WordPress | 5 Check out the official WordPress web hosting providers on WordPress.org for a few good options. I use SiteGround personally and WP Engine professionally. I’ve had good success with both. Who Uses WordPress? Excellent question! As of this writing something like 26% of the web uses WordPress ranging from huge brands like CNN and Beyonce (Queen B!) to unknown brands like View From The Pine. And WordPress is used in a variety of ways from ecommerce to web games to social networking. To see more uses of WordPress check out the Showcase. And soon to be you! Getting to Know WordPress | 6 The Community As you continue your dive into WordPress, you’ll likely come across the term “The Community”. As much as it sounds like a sci-fi totalitarian regime, it really is not. It’s a group of developers, designers, and WordPress users who are just trying to make WordPress work for their particular business or personal needs. Let’s break down who makes up the community in a way that everyone is familiar. Lunch room tables! Let’s find where you sit within the WordPress cafeteria, but don’t worry you’ll likely sit at many tables in your time with WordPress. The Starters (General Users) When you walk into the cafeteria with your rectangle pizza and juice box, the first set of tables you’ll come across are the general WordPress users. You’ll find all sorts of interesting people at these tables. This includes people that have got a WordPress site and a theme that they’re using to blog or run a pretty basic, no-frills site. These people are content creators that are using WordPress as a way of getting their content on the internet for all to see. Some General Users: People using only the core functionality of WordPress. You may find someone like Sally at this table. Sally runs a blog posting pictures of her cats doing cat things (napping and being a jerk) to share with her family and friends. The Power Users As you continue to explore the WordPress cafeteria you’ll come across the next set of tables. The Power Users. These are WordPress users that use the WordPress.org software to run more complicated setups. Let’s say Sally from the General Users group above has a post of her cat pushing things off a table go viral and she wants to capitalize on it by selling merchandise. She may install WooCommerce and some other plugins to turn her simple blog into a fully-fledged ecommerce store. She may need to get a new, more advanced theme setup too. Getting to Know WordPress | 7 Suddenly Sally is doing a lot more with WordPress and has turned her small photo-blog into a business. She’s become a WordPress Power User. The problem is she may not know how to do a lot of that herself, and may be looking to hire some help. Power Users to Follow: Chris Lema - @chrislema Post Status - @post_status Dan Norris - @thedannorris The Customizers The next set of tables you’ll come to are The Makers. These are the people who use WordPress to build solutions for their clients. They can be designers, developers, content creators, or all of the above. They can also vary in size from a freelancer putting in a couple of hours at night, to fully-fledged development companies with staffs and building WordPress sites for many clients. This group uses WordPress as a tool to meet client needs in a more efficient manner. By building off of WordPress, The Customizers can create completely unique WordPress builds that don’t function like an out of the box WordPress site at all, or they could be brought in to make modifications to an existing theme or plugin. The Customizers are those that customize WordPress to fit their specific needs. Customizers to Follow: Red8 Interactive - @red8interactive Tom McFarlin - @tommcfarlin Matt Report - @matterport The Contributors Finally as you get to the center of the room you’ll come across another group of tables. This group is The Contributors, and it can be broken down into a couple smaller groups. The Extenders First you’ve got your plugin and theme authors. These are the people that build the tools that can be used to extend WordPress and push it from a blogging platform to a full content management system. Getting to Know WordPress | 8 They do so by building plugins and themes that can be installed on your WordPress site to add extra functionality.