Indice dei contenuti per WordPress For Beginners 7th Edition in Wordpress For Beginners

One of the greatest aspects of WordPress is its much-admired easy installation, and the latest version is no different. If you’re blog is already running WordPress, ensure your database is backed up and then sign into the Dashboard, find the notification informing you that the latest WordPress upgrade is available (this will be across the top of the page) and click the link to begin the upgrade process. This is the same as soon as there is any new update for you to install. After the update completes, you’ll be presented with the new Dashboard page and confirmation that you are now running the newest edition. Before proceeding, however, check your plugins and themes for updates to ensure full compatibility with the new version of the blog software. Note that…

“The software will display the video preview, as it would on the sites it originates” Top tip Intelligent resizing rearranges the left and right menus to _t above and below the editing box, enabling you to edit your blog on smaller devices. One great way to attract readers – and ensure they hang around – is to embed clips from video sharing services in your posts, and a new feature as of WordPress is a refined method of viewing these video clips. In the past, the video was represented by a big grey block, which provided a useful guide to the size of the embedded clip. After updating to the latest WordPress, the software will display the video preview, much as you would see it on the sites it originates…

“You can now get a full preview in the Theme Customizer as you make changes” The latest WordPress updates features a few improvements to the theme customizer, which can be accessed in Appearance>Customize. Where once this was limited to changing colours and site title, it is now a far more powerful tool that can demonstrate the impact of any installed widgets on your chosen blog theme (as long as it is compatible with live widget previews) before you have installed it. The advantage of this is clear. Whereupon once you would have added a widget, saved it and then quickly refreshed your blog – probably in a new browser tab – to see how it looked (and whether or not it broke your blog layout!) now you can get a…

THINK OF THE WordPress dashboard as the brain, heart and guts of the site. When someone visits your WordPress site, they see the outside – your content and design. The dashboard is the master control panel where you configure every facet of your site, including your theme, which plug-ins it uses, and the pages that it is made up of. As you select the main WordPress menu items on the left, your dashboard changes to display appropriate content on the right. For example, if you select Posts, the dashboard displays a list of all your past and current posts. Each main menu also has a submenu beneath it, which appears when you click the main menu item. Beyond controlling your site’s appearance, content and features, the dashboard provides you with…

ADDING LINKS TO your blog’s layout is a great way of creating a network of related sites or bringing multiple accounts together under one banner URL. For example, if you are running a blog dedicated to your own cake recipes, you might want to link to other cookery sites to give your readership an expanded overview of the topic you write about. This is also helpful if you want to link to affiliate or friends’ websites to help aggregate their URL and boost exposure. Adding external links to your blog is a simple process that can help expand the reach of your work and branch out into something bigger. Don’t worry if you’re completely new to WordPress or still working out the basics, there really isn’t anything to adding links,…

WHEN USING WORDPRESS, new users often mistake pages and posts as the same thing. The distinction is that posts are timed and dated entries into your main blog reel, while pages are separate, and most importantly, static sections. They can almost be compared to sticky posts on chat forums in that while your main blog ticks over with each new entry you publish, pages will always remain intact in their detached spaces. Each new page added will create a new tab on your main content bar, and as such, many WordPress users employ this feature to create contact sections, photo galleries and more. In terms of traffic collation, all users clicking your pages will still be added to your overall blog hit counter because, while they appear separate from your…

THEMES ARE WHAT makes WordPress so very appealing. They don’t add faculties as such, but without them every single WordPress-powered website would look the same. Thankfully, the theme engine means there’s a range of dramatically different visual styles to be easily and simply installed, without any technical knowledge necessary. Different themes can bring in additional functionality as well as different looks; some are designed to work well as photo galleries or video sites, while others are strictly minimalist and aimed at letting the words do the talking. Built into WordPress is the ability to install multiple themes and to activate different ones at will. This means you can have different themes active on your blog for different occasions, with the only administration required to swap between them being the click…

RELEASED AS PART of WordPress 3.4, the Theme Customizer feature allows you to test themes before applying them to the entire blog site. As regular WordPress users will know, a theme is a third-party free or paid-for style template that can be laid over the WordPress site, giving the text and layout a uniformed appearance. This new feature enables its users to view new themes in a kind of ‘test mode’ before publishing them – it also eases the process of selecting backgrounds and images. Through the Theme Customizer you can play around with various looks and settings for your current theme or one you are thinking of switching to without publishing those changes for the whole world to see. The changes you can apply include colours, backgrounds and custom…

PLANNING EFFECTIVE NAVIGATION IS a crucial part of making your content accessible to visitors to your website, so it’s no surprise to find that WordPress makes it easy to create your own custom menus for finding your way around. Menus enable you to link between pages on your site or even external URLs, meaning not only can your make sure your own site is clearly laid out and not overwhelming (especially if you have a lot of pages), but you can incorporate affiliated pages or just other things your readers might like. The menu editor enables you to choose what will show within the menu, where in the menu each item should appear, and whether specific elements should appear beneath others items. This often means a drop-down menu will appear…

ALTHOUGH WORDPRESS STARTED off as primarily a blogging tool, its open source nature soon led to it being used for a wider variety of sites. Now you can not only find your basic online diaries, fan sites and personal promotion pages, but artist’s galleries, sites for businesses and high-profile individuals all using the software. Part of the reason for this diversity is the plug-in system. While the default WordPress installation has plenty of features, bloggers and site owners are a varied bunch and have specific needs so it would be impossible for the WordPress developers to cater for all of their requirements. This is where plug-ins come into the equation, providing a welcome service. If you imagine your WordPress to be the meat and two veg of a meal, then…

WORDPRESS AND MOST of the plugins available for it are classed as open source. This means that all the code that makes the software run is available for anyone to view and modify. The plugins page has an Editor button and clicking on this will open up the source code for the plugin ready for you to edit. WordPress and its associated products are written using the PHP language, and it’s highly advisable that you have at least a basic knowledge of PHP before attempting to modify a plugin, otherwise you might make changes that you can’t undo and render your plugin unusable. That said, there’s always the option to delete the item and reinstall it, so exercise caution but don’t worry about damaging your website if something does go…

ON THE SURFACE, the WordPress Dashboard is full of useful tools, functions and processes designed to help you tailor content to your specific needs. It’s also a great way of improving content flow and even exporting your posts to a self-hosted WordPress site via custom XML feeds. Importing content from other feeds covers a surprisingly large number of providers, such as Blogger, Live Journal, Posterous and Yahoo 360. Using this feature, you can draw in content from external contributors – or if you have multiple WordPress blogs – draw all of your content together in one all-encompassing feed for everyone to see. You can also set up remote posting that lets you create new blogs via email if you ever find yourself unable to log in or are sending important,…

WHEN YOU ARE posting articles to your blog, you will want to feel comfortable with the interface. By using the Writing Settings you can control how you add and edit posts and you can also set up WordPress so that you are able to make posts by email or from a thirdparty program. This can be extremely useful if you are posting from another computer or a mobile device and need to keep your updates current. Beginners to WordPress are most likely to use the first set of options which enable you to customise the size of the box into which you write your posts, convert written emoticons into graphics and set default post and link categories which means there is no fumbling around or wasting precious time when you…

IF THERE IS one thing that will bring people back to your blog time and time again, it is the ability to add comments. WordPress has comment facilities built-in which means you can post articles and get instant feedback from readers, many of whom will want to engage in lively debate. Having a comment facility is almost a mandatory requirement of blogs nowadays and they enable your site to be more dynamic and interactive. But there are times when discussions get out of hand. We’ve all seen how nasty comment threads can get when users go head-to-head, so to keep the right tone for your blog it’s wise to keep a handle on things in this area. WordPress not only enables you to set up alerts so that you can…

ALTHOUGH YOU WILL be happy with WordPress generated URLs for the majority of your blog posts, from time to time you may want to produce a specific, memorable and permanent URL. The permalink settings enable you to do this with ease, giving you a wealth of options. At its most basic, you can have a “?p=N” prefix to your website name. The N shows the number of the article you have posted. But you can go beyond that and be more descriptive, selecting the option to include the day, month and year or, if preferred, just the month and year in the URL. It makes it easier for visitors to instantly see when the post was written. “You can customise your own URL to put a unique stamp on your…

THE LAYOUT OF the screen with the post editing area in the middle and the panels on the right for accessing various features may suit some people, but it might not be the best for everyone, and it is possible to customise this and change the design. By modifying the screen layout of the editing area and panels you might be able to set up a more efficient interface that suits the way you like to work. For example, you can drag the bottom-right corner of the post editing area to increase its size. You can then see much more of a post as you’re working on it. Another simple thing that you can do is to hide panels you don’t need and to show hidden ones that you do…

1 The kitchen sink: The tooltip for the icon at the right-hand side of the toolbar says Toolbar Toggle. It used to be called the Kitchen Sink and quite simply it shows or hides the second row of the formatting toolbar. It enables you to select the paragraph style or text colour, remove formatting, indent text and so on. It isn’t something that you will constantly use and so it is hidden by default. “As you become more experienced and add alternative themes you may see different options” 2 Full screen mode: When working on a laptop with a small screen there are so many toolbars and panels that the post editing area is tiny and it is impossible to see more than a paragraph of text. Switch to full…

ONCE YOU HAVE written something for your blog website, the next step is to publish it. Up until a post is published, it cannot be seen on the website and the general public cannot access or read it. It may be stored in the WordPress system somewhere, for example, as a draft, but it is not on the website. Publishing makes it live on the web and visible to everyone that wants to read it, unless you have specified restrictions of course. Publishing is a simple matter of clicking the Publish button, but before you do this there are several checks that you need to perform. Typing slips, missing bits of information that are essential to a good site and so on can be irritating for visitors, so you must…

While categories are great for creating a structured, organised and strict filing system for posts, they don’t really let you to get creative with associations. For example, if you’re running a blog that provides obituaries for well-known public figures, you might categorise your posts by the area for which the celebrities were know – TV Personalities, Politicians, Musicians, Actors and so on. This makes sense because a visitor to your site would most likely think of celebrities in this way, so it’s a good solid structure to adopt. But what about where there are looser associations shared by posts? Tags are ideal for grouping by alternative structures so that, for example, you could tag anyone who died under the age of 60 with Young. This enables visitors to your website…

If you experience problems uploading certain files then there are various causes and solutions. For example, if the image file you are wishing to upload is too large and your connection times out then you should try uploading a smaller version, which requires optimising the image itself and could mean resaving it as a specific file type. As a rule of the thumb, JPEG works best for images with gradients, such as photographs, GIF is best for blocks of repetitive colour (including logos and line art) and PNG should be used to preserve partial transparency and large amounts of colour. Packages such as Photoshop or PaintShop Pro enable you to resize and compress images quickly, but there are plenty of free packages available too such as GIMP, Picasa, GraphicConverter and…

Some web hosts offer managed WordPress hosting which takes away most of the hassle when initially installing the software. It is not just designed to make things easier, however, because a hosting setup that is purposely designed for WordPress will ensure the fastest experience for your visitors and much less administration over time. Most packages will automatically install WordPress version updates and some will even ensure that all of your plugins are kept up to date all of the time. Even more importantly, they are built on infrastructure that is designed to work with the way WordPress stores data and this will ensure that you do not need to keep updating your package to account for database limits. Backups of your data are also usually included for peace of mind…

TUTORIAL OBJECTIVE Download, install and set up WordPress for first use TIME REQUIRED 15 mins SKILL LEVEL WORDPRESS HAS BECOME synonymous with the term blog, and with good reason. The web publishing platform is free to download, easy to install and simple to use. Add into this already-appealing mix the fact that there are continual updates and development, a swathe of themes and literally thousands of add-ons and it’s hard to see what’s not to like. WordPress itself comes in two distinct flavours: either hosted via www.WordPress.com, as we’ve explained on p18, or self-hosted via www.WordPress.org. In this tutorial we are focusing on the self-hosting option, which relates to users who already own a domain name and web space. The WordPress site extols the virtues of its ‘Famous 5-minute installation’…

IN THIS TUTORIAL we are going make some small changes to the settings of our theme. So from a fresh install, log in to the admin panel and within the dashboard you will see the Settings Panel on the bottom left. The Settings panel should be the first place we come to once our initial installation has been done because there are certain things that need to be set up from the off. In here we have seven options that we can make changes to: General, Writing, Reading, Discussion, Media, Privacy and Permalink. However, we only really need to make small adjustments to a few of these settings and some are more important than others, like the Permalink settings. So, let’s take it from the top and make the required…

TUTORIAL OBJECTIVE Learn how to edit your WordPress blog posts TIME REQUIRED 10 mins SKILL LEVEL WORDPRESS IS DESIGNED in such a way that creating a new post for your blog is as simple as typing it in. You won’t, however, always get it right first time. If you’ve got a newsbased site then you might need to update a post with new information as it becomes available, or sometimes you will simply need to go back and correct a typo. Thankfully this is not a task to challenge anyone. A WordPress blog is a dynamic site where nothing is ever fixed and final, and every word and image can be tweaked and adjusted until it is right. In this tutorial we will guide you through the various ways in…

WORDPRESS 4.4 IS out now, and includes a selection of new features and security fixes to help bring your blog or website right up to date. A host of new features are available in WordPress, from improvements to the theme customizer view and media library interface to enhanced media handling in the visual posting view and a brand new interface for installing plugins. You’ll also find some changes to the TinyMCE UI when creating a new post and it is now possible to select a language when you install WordPress for the first time. These improvements all work together to deliver an updated, polished WordPress experience. Enhancements to managing images and videos helps to save time with previews, while browsing for new plugins has become a far better experience, allowing…

“Note that some plugins may need to be disabled until the developers release compatible updates” Improvements to the way in which you compose posts in WordPress can be a benefit to new bloggers and those using WordPress as the publishing system for their top-rated, busy website. On the face of it, there are few differences with the previous version of WordPress, but these improvements have been gradual over the past couple of years, and as such are more secure and stable here. In the Add New Post screen you’ll still find the title box, the option to edit the Permalink (a vital tool in your SEO strategy) and to add images using the Add Media button. You may also prefer to view all of the available buttons in the TinyMCE…

Top tip When checking new plugins, always view the screenshots. If the developer believes in the plugin, they will take time to upload screenshots. Installing plugins can be a stressful experience. After backing-up your database and _ les, you then need to ensure the plugin you’re about to install (if you even find the one you’re looking for) is the best option for your blog. You may run it on a test blog first to make sure that there are no inadvertent side-effects. A handy update that Automattic, the WordPress developers, added in 4.0, was a new user interface that will alleviate some of the stress by presenting available plugins with a use preview that gives more information than was previously available to you. Now when you open the Plugins>Add…

Top tip The Screen Options button is available across several admin screens in WordPress, such as the Add New Post, All Posts and Dashboard. How do you use WordPress? For most, it is a case of sign in, scramble around looking for the link or feature you’re looking for on the Dashboard or New Post page, write your post, and then logout. With the addition of more and more plugins over time, this process can become increasingly slow. The reason for this is simple: you’re not using WordPress right. Using the Screen Options button, available at the top of almost every admin screen in the Dashboard, you can customise the blogging software’s back-end to see only what you need. For instance, you’ve installed several plugins to your WordPress blog, and…

The dashboard gives you complete control over your site, and WordPress even provides you with control over your dashboard. You can move modules around the screen so that the ones you use the most are near the top of the page. Modules that you still want visible but don’t use very often can be minimised to just their title bars. You can control which modules show up and how many columns of modules you want on the dashboard with the Screen Options. To move modules around, click and drag on its title bar and move it wherever you like on the dashboard. Minimise modules so that only their title bars are visible by clicking on the arrow on the right of the title bar. To make them visible again, click…

There are times when using a text link simply won’t cut it. If you feel your text links are looking cluttered, or that images might look better instead of text, the free version of WordPress lets you mask your URLs with visuals instead. However, you can’t use any image pulled off your computer’s hard drive. The image must first be hosted online using a service such as Photobucket, or you can use URLs of existing images online, but please do be mindful of copyright issues when doing the latter. Once you have an image URL you’re happy with, simply head over to the Add Links section on the WordPress dashboard. From here enter your link URL into the required field, then paste the image URL you just copied into the…

The number one rule of creating pages is to remember that there are, in fact, almost no rules at all. Pages can be used to create separate sections of your blog in uniform style, or they can be completely independent and drastically different in style and content. In this respect, they are perfectly suited to whatever purpose you need. From the All Pages menu you will find the option to add new pages. Once in the Creation section, simply fill out the title and body text to fit your needs then click Preview to get a glimpse of what your page will look like before committing to it. If the layout isn’t to your liking, you will find template options on the right of the Add New page. Here you…

Part of keeping a blog is speaking to a cross-section of the online community. If you succeed in making your feed a success, chances are you will start to see a lot of regular commentators speaking directly in response to your posts – and if you’re lucky – with each other. Fostering this level of participation will help keep visitors returning to your blog, and will create a sense of community among regulars. However, like all sites that get popular, the more people comment, the more moderation becomes necessary. As blog owner, you must approve all posts before they become visible. You also have the option to alter comments before approving, which is useful when toning down expletives, fixing broken links or deleting spam messages altogether. While moderation is crucial…

Themes are responsible for the structure and look of your website, and can immediately give it a unique appearance. WordPress has a fantastic library of free themes distributed under a GPL license, meaning you are free to edit the themes to your heart’s content. Other themes are available commercially, and the web is awash with these, but one of the primary benefits of the WordPress-hosted library is that you can browse it directly from within your own WordPress admin area. Click on the Install Themes tab at the top of the Themes screen, then either enter a search term or check one or more tickboxes to find themes that match your criteria. Once you’ve found a theme that looks interesting, you can preview it by clicking on the preview button.…

In WordPress 3.3 and earlier, if you navigated to the Appearance-Themes menu in your admin panel you would be presented with your currently-installed themes with the ability to preview any of your non-active installed themes by clicking on the ‘Preview’ link that appears when you hover over the theme example image. Here you will also come across the ‘Customize’ link. This is where you will be able to make all the changed you like to the appearance of your site. A .org site will be given more options than a .com site, and there might be a charge on certain aspects of your customisation, which you will be prompted with if you have selected one of these options. Click on this and the site will be presented in preview form…

Widgets are great because they enable you to not only choose where and how they’re displayed, but also control the content they output. Every widget has a set of configurable options ranging from the simple to the complex. Search, for example, has only one option available to configure – the label that appears above the search box. This means you can change it to read Find instead of Search, or What are you looking for, or Let me see… – really the choice is yours. A more complicated example is the Categories widget which enables you to configure the title but also the display style, giving you the option to show the number of posts in each category and any hierarchy you’ve set up for your categories. To really make…

Getting the navigation for your website right is crucial to the success of your blog, so it’s worth spending some time experimenting with the different options in the Custom Menus window. There are three primary types of item you can add to your menu – Pages, Categories and Links. Pages are drawn from those that you create in your blog. If you tick the Automatically add new top-level pages checkbox, new pages added to your blog will appear automatically when added. Categories work in much the same way as pages, allowing you to insert one or many of the categories you’ve added to your blog. Links enable you to create specific items in the menu that don’t lead to a page or category on your site. They can be used…

When you really need to change the structural layout of your blog, you’ve got a couple choices. You can either find a new theme that suits your needs or you can hack your existing theme to match your requirements. If you’ve decided on the latter, WordPress offers a useful set of tools to help you make changes. The appearance editor functionality looks very simple at first glance, and in many ways it is – a simple text editor that enables you to open, view, edit and save individual component files within a theme. There is more to it than this, however. For example, if you’re editing a core file that contains PHP logic, WordPress provides an API documentation feature that enables you to look up the usage notes for each…

The main dashboard of WordPress is somewhere you will find yourself spending a lot of time – as thousands of users will be able to tell you, blogging and WordPress can be an addictive habit! Most of the main areas you will be working with are to be found on the left-hand side menu, as it’s where you make new posts and keep your site updated, manage your media and adjust the settings for your site. At the top of the screen are a few hidden gems such as the shortcut to sections and the Help link. Here is where you can also find the Screen Options for the plug-ins page. Click on this and you will initially see a few parameters for exactly what is displayed on the screen.…

Sometimes the brief description in the main window might not give enough information on a plug-in. Maybe you need to know if it’s compatible with the latest version of WordPress or what has been updated in the latest release. The More Information window is hidden away, only accessed by the small Details button on the plug-in search. Opening it up in the first tab reveals a much longer brief on what the plugin does, quite often with useful links to other resources that relate to the plug-in’s function. The second tab is Installation. If you are having problems installing for some reason then this will guide you on how to manually install using FTP. Next is the Screenshots tab which is great for getting a visual feel for what the…

Expanding your writing pool is simple and is a great way of ensuring your content flows faster. It’s also a great way of sharing the workload and providing a more diverse tone across your content. To register a new user from scratch, you can notify a friend or colleague via the Invites area of the Users section. Simply input their email address to send them an activation link. Once clicked, the new writer will be registered and ready to write. Alternatively, you can add an existing WordPress user – or of course, a regular comment poster from your feed – by clicking Add Existing in the top left of the Users menu, or Add User From Community below the user list. Once there, simply add their email address and set…

As we’ve already discussed, you can pull in posts from a number of other blog providers using the Tools section on your WordPress Dashboard. To become accustomed with this process, it’s best to try replicating a cross section of your own feed first. To get started simply head to the Export section of the Tools menu. From here you can set parameters such as a date range for posts you want to import, specific authors, categories, and, if you also want, multimedia to be exported. Once you’re happy with your selection, simply hit Download Export File to create an XML file for your blog. Next, head to the Import section of Tools and choose your blog provider, which in this case is WordPress, and select the Choose File option. Simply…

One of the options that is available to users of WordPress.com is the ability to add an avatar, picture or icon – whatever you want to call it – to your blog, so when you repond to comments, your image will appear alongside your post. To change the image, select ‘Choose File’ and locate the file that you want. It has to be either a .jpeg or a .png in order to work. Don’t worry about pre-cropping the image as WordPress will take you through to anotehr screen in order to crop the image to the part of it you want to show on your posts. For example, if you have an image of you in a group of people, you’ll be able to single yourself out once you have…

We can’t let the Press This feature go without further explanation. It really is a wonderful tool that will speed up your blogging, make you even more productive and give visitors to your site a wider range of content to read and enjoy. When you are surfing the web you will come across a lot of content that you feel will be of interest not only to you but your readers. Usually it requires having to find embed code or a bit of cut and pasting, but with the Press This app, all you have to do is go to the Bookmarks menu of your browser, select the Press This option and a box opens up with the all the required information already within it. To get started, use your…

A static front is essential if you wish to move away from a blog-look on your new website. This could be the case if you are promoting a business or generally want to appear more professional and established. WordPress, by default, displays your posts on its front page so that when you post an article, it will appear as soon as people log on to your site. But while this creates a sense of immediacy and draws people straight into your content, some don’t like it, feeling that it makes the site look too much like a generic WordPress blog. There is a sense that your blog will look just like all the rest but a static front page can be designed for greater visual impact, giving you a chance…

WordPress throws a level of protection around its users when it comes to avatars. You can select to turn them off entirely, but if you activate them then commentators will be able to not only leave comments but include a picture with their missives too. WordPress uses a system of Globally Recognised Avatars (or Gravatar). Users of your site would have to go to the Gravatar website (http://en.gravatar.com) and sign-up using an email address. This then sends a link to their email. Clicking on it enables them to select a username and password and then add an image which can be cropped. The user selects whether it falls into one of four categories: G (suitable for all), PG (13+), R (17+) and X (mature). In your WordPress Discussion settings, you…

When you want to embed videos, WordPress makes life very easy when it comes to embedding multimedia content. All you have to do is post the URL to your content area and, if this box is ticked, when you publish the post, your link will automatically display the content. If the content isn’t able to be auto-embedded, it will display the URL instead. The idea behind this (make sure you have the latest WordPress installed or you may not see the feature available) is to prevent you from having to copy and paste any HTML from the hosting site. Using this method you can embed not just video or images but text too. Indeed, the number of websites that content can be pulled from is vast and includes YouTube, Vimeo,…

The number of structure tags that you can use is quite wide and varied. These are placed into the custom structure box in the Permalinks settings menu. They enable you to build up your own URL structures. By inserting %year%, the year when the post is published will appear in your URL. Using %monthnum% inserts the month of the year as a number, for example, 11. The same is true of %day%. You can narrow right down to hour (%hour%) which uses the 24-hour clock and even the minute (%minute%) or second (%second%). You could choose to ignore all reference to dates by going straight for the Post Id (%post_id%) or Postname (%postname%). With the latter, let’s say the name of your post is WordPress is ace, the URL will…

BUILD UP A following for your blog with regular updates so there is always something new for people to read by clicking Posts>Add New in the Dashboard to add content. There are only three areas you need in order to post an item. The first is the title box at the top and you should ensure that it is short and describes the content. Include key words that will grab a reader’s attention. The second area is the large box in the middle where you enter the text of the post. The word counter at the bottom is useful and shows how much you have written. The third area is the Publish panel. The Publish button makes the blog post live on your website, but the Preview and Save Draft…

THE CONTENT OF your blog and the subjects that you write about are clearly the most important factor when building a website and trying to attract visitors, but perhaps the second most important aspect is the way that it looks. One long chunk of text does not look good and if it is hard to read then it might put people off and visitors could drift away. You can make a blog look good and ensure that it is easy to read by formatting the text. One of the ways to do this is to break the text down into paragraphs and simply hit the Return key every few lines. If the post is a long one, paragraphs might not be enough and inserting subheadings can help readers see where…

SUPPOSE YOU HAVE an important announcement to make on your blog and you want to write it and get it out of the way. However, you don’t want it to go live on the website and in full public view just yet. What can you do? It is easy, and the solution is to set a publishing date that is in the future on the day and time you want the post to appear. This ability to schedule posts to be published automatically on whatever day and time you choose can be a very useful feature on occasions. In the Publish panel you have all the controls you need to set the publish date and time, so you just set it and forget it, and let WordPress handle the rest.…

1 Create a new category: Creating a new category is easy. At minimum you need to give it a name, and click the Add New Category button at the bottom of the Add New Category form. If you’d like to give readers more information about what the category will contain, add a description. You can also nest categories inside each other, creating a hierarchy. Finally, the slug is automatically generated, but you can specify your own slug (a few words that describe a post or page) for search engine optimisation. “Even if you have a very long list of categories, you can find the category you want to edit and delete without any fuss” 2 Edit a category: Editing a category is just as easy as creating a new one.…

1 Add new media: Uploading new media is a simple process that will only take a few seconds. With the new 4.0 Media Library, you can simply click on Media in the Dashboard sidebar and you’ll be presented with an image grid. A drag and drop will appear at the top of the grid. You can also select ‘Add New’ from the sidebar or at the top of the Media Library page. See step 4 for the two different uploading methods. 2 Manage new media: After you have uploaded your selected piece of new media, it will be added to your media library. You will now be able to apply all of the options we explored on the media library pages (page 42). Also, if you move your cursor over…

Depending on how long you expect to run a WordPress blog and what your ambitions are, you should be very careful when checking all of the features a host offers. MySQL databases are required for WordPress and checking the available limits is crucial to running and adding content to a blog over time. Some hosts limit MySQL database sizes to 100MB or even lower and even if these appear to be ample at the start, after a year or two you may hit the limit and need to transfer your database contents to another provider. The problem is that moving databases requires lots of technical knowledge so if you can be assured of longevity right from the start you will save yourself a lot of trouble in the future. Remember…

At first glance, the Dashboard may not seem all that different in recent updates, but on closer inspection you should spot the Welcome panel, where a collection of shortcuts can be found. Ideal for newcomers to WordPress, the panel – which provides shortcuts for adding widgets, installing a new theme, writing a new post and adding an about page, as well as managing widgets and menus, turning comments on and o_ and more – can be dismissed if you’re a more experienced user. Elsewhere on the Dashboard, the At a Glance panel, your blog’s comments Activity, the Quick Draft box and the WordPress News (useful for spotting when new updates are imminent!) are also available, and are as customisable as they were before, you are able to drag and drop…

One key addition to WordPress in recent months is an improvement to the Media Library. It is now possible to view a larger-resolution version of an uploaded image and make the necessary changes with ease. Improvements in how your images are handled in the Edit screen (Media>Library>{Select your image}>Edit Image) meanwhile allow you to make and save edits without worrying whether or not the changes you make will be applied. Although it isn’t advisable to edit images on the server of a busy website, sometimes it just cannot be avoided (we would advise that image editing usually takes place on your computer or tablet). You can also add a new title for the image, set a caption to be displayed when it is embedded in a post as well as…

If you run a blog that is targeted at a foreign country, and have a team of bloggers who speak the language of that region, then it might be a wise strategy to ensure that they can use WordPress effectively. The best way to do this is to setup the blog software using their preferred language, which is now an option when you install WordPress onto a new server. You may already be familiar with the WordPress installation screen, seen as you open your domain name in your browser after uploading the latest unzipped version of the blog software (see page 84 on advice on how to do this, see page 80-83 for hosting advice). Setting your preferred language is the first option here. If you’re used to using automated…

TUTORIAL OBJECTIVE Create a new blog account at wordpress.com TIME REQUIRED 10 mins SKILL LEVEL ONE OF THE greatest strengths of WordPress is its ability to be installed and hosted in your own webspace at your own domain, giving you complete control over how the site functions. Yet managing a site completely is a big step for beginners. At wordpress.com you can set up a new blog, with a name of your choice, and have the hosting and management taken care of for you, all for free. You don’t lose any of the functionality of the WordPress blogging system, you can still choose your own themes, and customise the site perfectly to match your idea. And if you want that greater control in the future, you can easily migrate the…

1 Posts: The Posts dashboard is probably the most important, giving you the tools to add, edit and delete existing posts on your site. When you click on Posts you see a listing of current posts. You can search for existing posts by keyword, or filter entries by date and category. The Categories menu option enables you to manage and add new hierarchical categories for your posts. Tags can be managed with the Post Tags link. “The Posts dashboard is probably the most important, giving you the tools to add, edit and delete existing posts” 2 Settings: The Settings dashboard has a huge number of options for controlling everything from the name of your site, size of thumbnail images and whether search engines can find your site. General settings control…

1 Customisation: Using the All Links tab under the Links section is a great way of getting an overview of all the external links on your top feed. Bear in mind that the links added here will all appear next to your default – and therefore main – blog reel. From All Links URLs can be added, edited and ordered by your personal preference. You can add as many as you like, or remove them altogether if you prefer. “From the All Links tab, URLs can be added, edited and ordered by your preference. You can add as many as you like, or remove them altogether” 2 Positioning: If you take a close look at the image, you will see that the two default URLs from the All Links section…

1 An overview: The top entry in the Pages section of your dashboard is entitled All Pages, and this gives you an overview of every page currently active on your blog site. The titles of each page on this list will be positioned on your blog’s tab bar. The positioning changes depending on what blog layout you are currently using, so stay mindful of how long page titles are to avoid a clumsy or cluttered tab bar. “Adding new pages is similar to adding blog posts, but remember these will not be published in your blog reel, but on the tab bar instead” 2 Adding pages: Adding new pages is similar to adding blog posts, but you must remember that these will not be published on your blog reel, but…

1 The overview: By clicking the Comments section of the WordPress back end you can see every comment made on your blog since you launched it. They are always ordered by date unless otherwise specified in the filter drop-downs, and you will be able to see the full comment rather than an excerpt like some blog back ends. This means you can see everything you need at a glance instead of sifting through multiple menus. 2 Bulk Actions: If your blog becomes really popular and you start to be inundated with comments – both genuine, adverts and spam alike – you will undoubtedly find it difficult to manage them all manually one by one. From the top Comments menu, it is possible to look over each comment to discern if…

1 View installed themes: When you first enter the Themes screen you will be presented with a grid of themes. On a .org account it will be your installed themes, on a .com account it will be a list of themes available to you – you won’t have to ‘install’ a theme on a .com account. Just click activate. On a .org account, you will have to install the theme first, then activate it from your list of themes. Your active theme will show in the top-left of the list. “You can browse the online theme repository directly from the themes admin area” 2 Browse themes: You can browse the online theme repository directly from the Themes admin area. Click on the Install Themes tab then choose a search term…

1 Set Title & Tagline: The title and tagline of your blog site are vitally important – after all, they alone could determine whether visitors continue to read. This feature allows you to play around and input new text for your title and tagline and see how it reads and sits on the preview site on the same page. The advantage of this is that you can see how your new title and tagline looks before deciding on whether to go ahead with the changes and actually publish them. “The theme customizer enables WordPress users to view new themes in a kind of ‘test mode’ before publishing them” 2 Play around with colours: Your readers probably won’t care if your title and tagline text is black or blue, but what…

1 Drag to arrange: Widgets can be arranged by dragging them around the screen. New widgets can be added to nominated widget areas (which will vary according to the theme you’ve got activated), reordered within that widget area or removed from the area altogether. Simply click, drag and release to arrange widgets as you see fit. 2 Configure it: More or less every widget has a set of configurable options which enable you to customise the way it behaves and ultimately how it will appear on your site. Once you’ve added a widget to the widget area of your choice, click on the disclosure arrow to the right of the name to reveal these settings. Some, such as Search, are as simple as providing a label for the header above…

1 Create a custom menu: Creating a custom menu is simple enough, but might be a little confusing the first time you do it. Start off by adding a name for your custom menu and clicking the Save Menu button. If you’d like any additional pages you subsequently add to your website to appear in the menu automatically, tick the ‘Automatically add new top-level pages’ checkbox. Once you’ve saved your menu, you can start adding items to it. “The menu editor enables you to add as many or as few categories to your menu as you’d like” 2 Add categories: The menu editor enables you to add as many or as few categories to your menu as you’d like, meaning you can leave it at just one or two or…

1 The Editor window: The editor window provides access to the code that makes up your theme. From here you can edit the code directly, enabling sophisticated changes to be effected directly from your browser window. It’s very easy to break the theme when editing, so only do so if you’re a confident trouble-shooter, and have at least a basic grasp of CSS and PHP/HTML. 2 File selector: WordPress displays a list of every file that makes up the theme you’re editing, with the exception of any graphics used. You can edit any of the files shown simply by clicking on its name. WordPress will load the contents of the file into the Editor window, enabling you to make changes directly. The list is split into two sections according to…

1 Pre-installed plug-ins: WordPress comes pre-installed with two plug-ins – one useful, one not so useful (but more fun!). Akismet is a comment spam blocker that works by comparing the text of a comment against known spam. If you think your site is going to be popular, it’s a good idea to activate this plug-in. Hello Dolly is a plug-in that when activated shows a random lyric from the Louis Armstrong song Hello Dolly on your admin page. “Most WordPress plug-ins are free, although quite often there will be a donate button” 2 Add New: Clicking on this button will take you to the Install Plugins page where you will be able to search for and install new plug-ins. You can search for a plug-in by name, author or tag…

1 The search: Probably your first port of call when entering the Add New page is the search option. Just click on the textbox and type in the name of a plug-in. The great thing about the search is that if you are not 100% sure of the exact plug-in you want then you can search for it by what you want it to do. For instance searching Gallery will bring up any plug-in that provides a gallery function. 2 Install a plug-in: You can quickly and easily install a new plug-in from the Add New page once you have found one that takes your fancy by clicking on the Install Now button. This then reveals an installation page which shows you how the progress of the install is going…

1 The main code window: The focal point of the editor is the Editor window. This displays all the code that makes up the plugin. You can easily scroll down the code using the bar on the right. The Plugin Editor is primarily designed to make small changes rather than for a major rewrite; if you are planning on making quite a few changes to the plugin, then it might be more beneficial to copy the code to a proper editor. “The plugin editor is primarily designed to make small changes rather than a rewrite” 2 Browse functions: The Documentation Lookup shows a list of the functions within the code with a quick link to the relative documentation. When browsing a large chunk of code you may come across a…

1 Users section: In the Users section of your dashboard you can see all of your created users at a glance, complete with user role descriptions, contact details, usernames and more. Similar to comments and pages, you can apply multiple Bulk Actions to users using the dropdown menu at the top of the Users menu, such as deleting old users or categorising them to keep the roster tidy. 2 User profiles: Giving each user more identity on your blog is a useful way to help build a rapport with your readership, and to clearly identify which author is posting blog entries. This can be useful as it makes your blog seem less anonymous, and if visitors want to get in touch it can help direct them to the right person…

1 Press This widget: By dragging the Press This widget to your browser toolbar, you can save content from other sites quickly and include them in your own posts. Use your mouse to highlight text and images, click the widget and an Add New Post page will appear with the copied content ready to publish. You’ll also be able to set a category, tags and post type, although setting a featured image isn’t possible. “The Import section of the tools menu lets you pull in posts from another blog hosted by third-party providers, or other WordPress blogs” 2 Multiple sources: The Import section of the Tools menu lets you pull in posts from another blog hosted by selfhosted providers, or other WordPress blogs. To set this up, simply choose the…

1 Give it a name: The most important setting of all is the name of your blog, so proudly make sure it is typed in correctly into the Site Title box. Depending on the theme you chose, this name will typically appear at the top of your blog and on every page. It will also appear in the title bar of your browser. When you enable RSS feeds, the title will be used to identify your musings. 2 Choose a taglines: You don’t have to fill this box in but you may well want to: it lets you place a slogan or tagline on your page, a small, maybe witty, description of your site that everyone can see. You’ll want it to be something memorable that sums up what your…

1 Enable graphic emoticons: Although some people hate them, it appears the emoticon is here to stay. Depending on your preference – or indeed what you are writing about – you may wish to keep your emoticons in text form or you can get WordPress to convert them into little yellow graphics. You can make your choice very quickly and easily by simply ticking the box on the Settings page. “You’re not restricted to going through your site in order to post articles. Set up an address and any articles sent will appear on your blog” 2 Select a default category: There are three types of default categories. With a Default Post Category, any posts you write will automatically be placed there if you don’t specify otherwise. Not all themes…

When you create a blog you naturally want everyone to be able to see it on your website, and in the Publish panel on the right the visibility is set to public by default. This is exactly what is needed most of the time. However, there may be certain posts that you want to restrict access to. For example, a post might only provide information for members of a club and not the general public. It could be restricted with a password. Another possibility is to limit certain content for the managers or a department in a company. Click the Edit link next to Visibility and several new options are presented. One is to stick the post to the front page. It’s great for announcements and it won’t get pushed…

IT IS EASY to type in a block of text, but it won’t look very exciting to your visitors and it will be hard to read. We have looked at breaking text up into paragraphs, alignment and so on, so now let’s move on to more exciting things like bullet points and numbered lists. A series of bullet points is a great way to emphasise features, functions, items and important things. Make them short and snappy and readers can quickly scan them to get the information they need. Numbered lists are useful too and you don’t even need to type in the numbers because WordPress does it for you. All you need to do is type the first one and click the toolbar button. You can then add as many…

CATEGORIES ARE LIKE the filing system in your local library. They help organise your posts into meaningful sections, enabling you to find every post of a particular type quickly and easily. Rather than having a fixed set of categories prescribed to you however, WordPress lets you choose your own category structure to match your filing preferences. So if you’re creating a blog about different sports, you might want to create categories by game; one for football, a second for rugby and a third for golf. If you’re more interested in music, however, you might opt for hip hop, jazz, drum and bass and so on. WordPress is flexible enough to enable you to create your own taxonomy, designed around your interests, subject matter and posts. You can also add new…

WHERE CATEGORIES PROVIDE a rigid librarylike filing system, tags are more about abstract associations. What is a tag? Put simply, it’s a marker to indicate the contents of a post. One post can have many tags, a single tag or no tags at all. Tags are not at all strict or limiting – you can happily file a post under a Sixties Music category and tag the same post with Fancy shoes, Los Angeles, Bread and butter and Aliens if they are relevant. When someone reading your post clicks on one of the tags, WordPress will display all the other posts that have the same tag, so although the post might have been about a band that was popular in 1962, if the lead singer wore fancy shoes and you…

THE BEST ADVICE we can offer you when choosing a new WordPress host is to make sure that you understand what is required to offer a reliable and speedy experience for you and your visitors. There are many technical areas that need to be researched to ensure a positive online experience over time and some of these are not obviously promoted by hosts. We will cover the most obvious advice and also some areas that are easily overlooked, and hopefully at the end you should have a good idea of what you will need to run your WordPress environment. Pricing is of course important, but even more so is the reputation of a host and the reviews of its customers. If you can find a host who offers fast and…

Pagely pagely.co.uk £14.98-£35.96/$64-1799 per month Pagely offers a managed WordPress hosting platform that gives customers innovation, speed, scalability, and security. Its specialist nature means that it concentrates itself on enterprises and big brands. The beauty is all this knowledge is passed down meaning smaller customers get all the benefits. This is an ideal host for expanding businesses. 1&1 www.1and1.co.uk £0.99-6.99 per month/$11.60-$33.28 1&1 are a firmly established web host offering a wide range of hosting services. They offer ease of use, a host of tools and features and good prices. If you are a casual blogger or photographer they have a package for you. If you are looking for something for larger projects and top performance they will have a WordPress package for you. Flywheel getflywheel.com £4.29-£7.16/$15-$75 per month Flywheel…

TUTORIAL OBJECTIVE An overview of the basics needed to get a blog online TIME REQUIRED 30 mins SKILL LEVEL GETTING A WORDPRESS blog up and running is much simpler than first time, casual and future expert users might think. Once past the installation process, getting a post online takes literally a matter of minutes. The base of any blog is its posts and getting these right are paramount to a successful, informative and compelling blog. It is worth noting that the styling of a blog post is predetermined to a certain extent by the current theme. Nevertheless, the Posts window provides enough ammunition to ensure a post is well laid out and neatly styled with engaging content. The title is the first and perhaps most important element of any post;…