Figaros WP Users Guide v2

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Figaro’s WordPress
User’s Guide
Version 2: 30 Nov 09

Author: Website: License:
Figaro http://educhalk.org GPL – Have Fun! [2009]
This user’s guide is a derivative work based heavily on documentation
made available under GPL from http://codex.wordpress.org. The
content, format, and organization have been edited some from its
original form. This guide is being made available under the same GPL
licenses as the original work. There is no guarantee this information is
accurate…use at your own risk.
Neither this product, nor its author, is affiliated with, or endorsed by,
WordPress. WordPress is a trademark owned by Automattic, Inc.
[HTTP://EDUCHALK.ORG]
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents ................................................................................................................................... 2
About this Book .................................................................................................................................... 15
ABOUT WORDPRESS .................................................................................................................................................... 15
Chapter 1: Introduction to Blogging .................................................................................................... 16
WHAT IS A "BLOG"? ..................................................................................................................................................... 16
THE BLOG CONTENT .................................................................................................................................................. 16
COMMENTS .................................................................................................................................................................... 16
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A BLOG AND CMS?................................................................................................. 17
THINGS BLOGGERS NEED TO KNOW...................................................................................................................... 17
TRACKBACKS ................................................................................................................................................................. 19
PINGBACKS .................................................................................................................................................................... 19
VERIFYING PINGBACKS AND TRACKBACKS ........................................................................................................... 20
COMMENT MODERATION .......................................................................................................................................... 20
COMMENT SPAM ........................................................................................................................................................... 20
PRETTY PERMALINKS .................................................................................................................................................. 21
BLOG BY EMAIL ............................................................................................................................................................ 21
POST SLUGS ................................................................................................................................................................... 22
EXCERPT ........................................................................................................................................................................ 22
PLUGINS ......................................................................................................................................................................... 22
BASICS-A FEW BLOGGING TIPS ................................................................................................................................ 22
Chapter 2: WordPress Semantics ......................................................................................................... 23
INTRODUCTION TO WORDPRESS TERMINOLOGY ................................................................................................ 23
TERMINOLOGY RELATED TO CONTENT................................................................................................................. 23
TERMINOLOGY RELATED TO DESIGN .................................................................................................................... 24
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TERMINOLOGY FOR THE ADMINISTRATOR ............................................................................................................ 25
THE TERMINOLOGY OF HELP ................................................................................................................................... 25
HISTORY OF THE WORDPRESS NAME ..................................................................................................................... 25
Chapter 3: Installing WordPress .......................................................................................................... 26
SYSTEM RECOMMENDATIONS ................................................................................................................................... 26
5-MINUTE INSTALL ...................................................................................................................................................... 26
Chapter 4: Getting Started .................................................................................................................... 28
OVERVIEW OF THE ADMINISTRATION PANEL....................................................................................................... 28
GENERAL STRUCTURE ................................................................................................................................................ 28
NAVIGATION................................................................................................................................................................. 28
SHORTCUTS MENU ....................................................................................................................................................... 30
CUSTOMIZATION .......................................................................................................................................................... 31
DASHBOARD.................................................................................................................................................................. 32
DEFINING YOUR SETTINGS ....................................................................................................................................... 33
GENERAL SETTINGS .................................................................................................................................................... 33
WRITING SETTINGS ..................................................................................................................................................... 35
ADMINISTRATION DEFAULTS .................................................................................................................................... 36
NOTE .............................................................................................................................................................................. 37
REMOTE PUBLISHING ................................................................................................................................................. 37
POST VIA E-MAIL .......................................................................................................................................................... 37
PRESS THIS..................................................................................................................................................................... 38
UPDATE SERVICES ....................................................................................................................................................... 38
READING SETTINGS .................................................................................................................................................... 38
FRONT PAGE DISPLAYS ............................................................................................................................................... 39
BLOG PAGES SHOW AT MOST ..................................................................................................................................... 40
FOR EACH ARTICLE IN A FEED, SHOW...................................................................................................................... 40
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ENCODING FOR PAGES AND FEEDS ......................................................................................................................... 40
DISCUSSION SETTINGS ................................................................................................................................................ 40
DEFAULT ARTICLE SETTING ...................................................................................................................................... 41
OTHER COMMENT SETTINGS ..................................................................................................................................... 41
E-MAIL ME WHENEVER ............................................................................................................................................... 42
BEFORE A COMMENT APPEARS .................................................................................................................................. 43
COMMENT BLACKLIST ................................................................................................................................................ 43
AVATARS ........................................................................................................................................................................ 44
AVATAR DISPLAY .......................................................................................................................................................... 44
MAXIMUM RATING ...................................................................................................................................................... 44
DEFAULT AVATAR ....................................................................................................................................................... 44
MEDIA SETTINGS ......................................................................................................................................................... 45
IMAGE SIZES .................................................................................................................................................................. 45
PRIVACY SETTINGS ...................................................................................................................................................... 46
PERMALINK SETTINGS ................................................................................................................................................ 46
TIP ................................................................................................................................................................................... 48
MISCELLANEOUS SETTINGS ....................................................................................................................................... 48
UPLOADING FILES ....................................................................................................................................................... 48
NOTE .............................................................................................................................................................................. 49
TRACK LINKS’ UPDATE TIMES .................................................................................................................................. 49
DEFINING YOUR USERS ............................................................................................................................................. 49
SUMMARY OF ROLES .................................................................................................................................................... 50
NOTE .............................................................................................................................................................................. 51
ADDING A NEW USER ................................................................................................................................................. 51
EDITING YOUR PROFILE ............................................................................................................................................ 51
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NOTE .............................................................................................................................................................................. 52
PERSONAL OPTIONS .................................................................................................................................................... 52
NAME .............................................................................................................................................................................. 53
CONTACT INFO............................................................................................................................................................. 53
ABOUT YOURSELF ........................................................................................................................................................ 54
BEFORE YOU LEAVE ................................................................................................................................................... 54
MANAGING USERS ....................................................................................................................................................... 54
SEARCH USERS .............................................................................................................................................................. 56
FILTER USERS................................................................................................................................................................ 56
DELETE USERS ............................................................................................................................................................. 56
CHANGE USER ROLE ................................................................................................................................................... 57
Chapter 5: Creating Content................................................................................................................. 58
POSTS .............................................................................................................................................................................. 58
CREATING A NEW POST ............................................................................................................................................. 58
TAGS ............................................................................................................................................................................... 60
CATEGORIES ................................................................................................................................................................. 60
EXCERPT ........................................................................................................................................................................ 61
TRACKBACKS ................................................................................................................................................................. 61
DISCUSSION ................................................................................................................................................................... 62
CUSTOM FIELDS ........................................................................................................................................................... 62
POST AUTHOR............................................................................................................................................................... 63
POST REVISIONS ........................................................................................................................................................... 63
PUBLISH .......................................................................................................................................................................... 63
OTHER WAYS TO CREATE POSTS.............................................................................................................................. 64
PRESS THIS..................................................................................................................................................................... 64
BY E-MAIL...................................................................................................................................................................... 64
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XML-RPC AND ATOM INTERFACE .......................................................................................................................... 64
MANAGING EXISTING POSTS .................................................................................................................................... 65
MANAGING CATEGORIES ........................................................................................................................................... 65
MANAGING TAGS......................................................................................................................................................... 65
MEDIA ............................................................................................................................................................................ 66
UPLOADING MEDIA FILES ......................................................................................................................................... 66
FLASH UPLOADER ........................................................................................................................................................ 67
BROWSER UPLOADER .................................................................................................................................................. 68
MEDIA LIBRARY ........................................................................................................................................................... 68
PAGES ............................................................................................................................................................................. 70
CREATING PAGES ........................................................................................................................................................ 70
PAGE ORDER ................................................................................................................................................................ 71
PAGE PARENT ............................................................................................................................................................... 71
PAGE TEMPLATES ........................................................................................................................................................ 71
CHANGING THE URL (OR “SLUG”) OF YOUR PAGES ........................................................................................... 72
LISTING YOUR PAGES ON YOUR SITE ..................................................................................................................... 72
MANAGING EXISTING PAGES ................................................................................................................................... 73
LINKS .............................................................................................................................................................................. 75
ADDING NEW LINKS ................................................................................................................................................... 75
NAME .............................................................................................................................................................................. 76
WEB ADDRESS .............................................................................................................................................................. 76
DESCRIPTION ................................................................................................................................................................ 76
CATEGORIES ................................................................................................................................................................. 76
NOTE .............................................................................................................................................................................. 77
TARGET .......................................................................................................................................................................... 77
LINK RELATIONSHIP (XFN) ...................................................................................................................................... 78
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ADVANCED.................................................................................................................................................................... 78
SAVE................................................................................................................................................................................ 79
MANAGING EXISTING LINKS .................................................................................................................................... 80
LINK CATEGORIES ....................................................................................................................................................... 81
ADDING A NEW LINK CATEGORY ........................................................................................................................... 81
MANAGING EXISTING LINK CATEGORIES ............................................................................................................. 82
NOTE .............................................................................................................................................................................. 83
Chapter 6: Comments and Pings.......................................................................................................... 84
COMMENTS, PINGBACKS AND TRACKBACKS: TERMINOLOGY ........................................................................... 84
USING THE COMMENTS SCREEN .............................................................................................................................. 84
COMMENT SPAM ........................................................................................................................................................... 89
FIGHTING COMMENT SPAM ....................................................................................................................................... 89
STEALTH SPAM.............................................................................................................................................................. 89
Chapter 7: Design and Layout ............................................................................................................. 91
ABOUT THEMES............................................................................................................................................................ 91
TEMPLATE FILES .......................................................................................................................................................... 91
TEMPLATE TAGS .......................................................................................................................................................... 91
CSS STYLE SHEETS....................................................................................................................................................... 91
SELECTING THE ACTIVE THEME .............................................................................................................................. 91
CUSTOM HEADERS ....................................................................................................................................................... 92
UPLOADING A NEW THEME ...................................................................................................................................... 93
ADDING THEMES VIA THE WORDPRESS INTERFACE ........................................................................................... 93
ADDING THEMES VIA FTP......................................................................................................................................... 95
ADDING NEW THEMES IN CPANEL.......................................................................................................................... 95
NOTE .............................................................................................................................................................................. 95
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MODIFYING THEMES .................................................................................................................................................. 96
CSS .................................................................................................................................................................................. 97
TEMPLATE TAGS .......................................................................................................................................................... 97
CREATING YOUR OWN THEME ................................................................................................................................ 97
SIDEBAR WIDGETS....................................................................................................................................................... 98
ADDING WIDGETS ....................................................................................................................................................... 98
CONFIGURING WIDGETS............................................................................................................................................ 99
REMOVING A WIDGET ................................................................................................................................................ 99
Chapter 8: Plugins .............................................................................................................................. 100
ABOUT PLUGINS ......................................................................................................................................................... 100
DEFAULT PLUGINS .................................................................................................................................................... 100
AKISMET ...................................................................................................................................................................... 100
HELLO DOLLY ............................................................................................................................................................ 100
FINDING AND INSTALLING PLUGINS..................................................................................................................... 101
BUILT-IN PLUGIN BROWSER .................................................................................................................................... 101
OTHER WAYS TO FIND PLUGINS ............................................................................................................................ 102
COMPATIBILITY ISSUES ............................................................................................................................................. 102
PLUGIN UPDATES....................................................................................................................................................... 102
MANAGING YOUR PLUGINS .................................................................................................................................... 102
CREATING A PLUGIN ................................................................................................................................................. 102
Chapter 9: System Administration ..................................................................................................... 104
IMPORTING FILES....................................................................................................................................................... 104
EXPORTING FILES ...................................................................................................................................................... 104
FILE PERMISSIONS...................................................................................................................................................... 105
NOTE ............................................................................................................................................................................ 105
BACKING UP YOUR DATABASE AND FILES .......................................................................................................... 106
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UPGRADING WORDPRESS ........................................................................................................................................ 106
DOING A MANUAL UPGRADE ................................................................................................................................. 107
WARNING .................................................................................................................................................................... 107
STEP 1: PREPARE ........................................................................................................................................................ 107
STEP 2: REPLACE WORDPRESS FILES ..................................................................................................................... 107
NOTE ............................................................................................................................................................................ 108
STEP 3: UPGRADE YOUR INSTALLATION ............................................................................................................... 108
MOVING WORDPRESS ............................................................................................................................................... 108
Chapter 10: Working with WordPress Templates ............................................................................... 110
STEPPING INTO TEMPLATES .................................................................................................................................... 110
THE WORDPRESS PAGE STRUCTURE ..................................................................................................................... 110
BASIC TEMPLATE FILES ............................................................................................................................................ 110
MORE COMPLEX PAGE STRUCTURES ..................................................................................................................... 111
WHERE'S THE BEEF?.................................................................................................................................................. 111
TEMPLATE FILES WITHIN TEMPLATE FILES ........................................................................................................ 111
SPECIAL TEMPLATE FILES ........................................................................................................................................ 112
TEMPLATE FILE TIPS ................................................................................................................................................. 112
TRACKING OPENING AND CLOSING TAGS .......................................................................................................... 112
TEST TEMPLATE FILES UNDER DIFFERENT VIEWS............................................................................................ 113
COMMENT DEVIATIONS ........................................................................................................................................... 113
CLOSE THE TAG DOOR BEHIND YOU ................................................................................................................... 113
CSS STYLES IN TEMPLATES ...................................................................................................................................... 113
TEMPLATE HIERARCHY ............................................................................................................................................ 113
INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................................................... 113
USING CONDITIONAL TAGS .................................................................................................................................... 113
THE GENERAL IDEA ................................................................................................................................................. 114
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EXAMPLES.................................................................................................................................................................... 114
THE TEMPLATE HIERARCHY IN DETAIL ............................................................................................................... 114
TEMPLATE TAGS/ANATOMY OF A TEMPLATE TAG ........................................................................................... 116
INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................................................... 116
PHP CODE TAG .......................................................................................................................................................... 116
WORDPRESS FUNCTION ............................................................................................................................................ 117
OPTIONAL PARAMETERS........................................................................................................................................... 117
TEMPLATE TAGS ........................................................................................................................................................ 118
Chapter 11: Working with Images ...................................................................................................... 124
A PICTURE SAYS MORE THAN A THOUSAND WORDS. .......................................................................................... 124
STYLING IMAGES IN WORDPRESS .......................................................................................................................... 124
USING IMAGES IN POSTS .......................................................................................................................................... 124
INSERTING IMAGES INTO POSTS ............................................................................................................................. 125
IMAGE SIZE AND QUALITY ...................................................................................................................................... 126
RESIZING IMAGES ...................................................................................................................................................... 128
STYLING IMAGES ........................................................................................................................................................ 128
STYLING ALL IMAGES ............................................................................................................................................... 128
STYLING SOME IMAGES ............................................................................................................................................ 129
WRAPPING TEXT AROUND IMAGES ....................................................................................................................... 130
GIVING THE IMAGE STYLE...................................................................................................................................... 130
BORDERS ...................................................................................................................................................................... 131
PADDING AND IMAGE WIDTH ................................................................................................................................ 131
IMAGE LEFT, RIGHT, AND CENTER ....................................................................................................................... 132
LEFT, RIGHT, AND CENTERED EXAMPLES ........................................................................................................... 132
ALTERNATIVE TEXT SIZE ........................................................................................................................................ 133
CAPTIONING THE IMAGE......................................................................................................................................... 133
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CLEAR THE DISPLAY ................................................................................................................................................. 134
Chapter 12: Designing Headers ......................................................................................................... 135
THE WORDPRESS HEADER ...................................................................................................................................... 135
STYLING THE HEADER ............................................................................................................................................. 136
CHANGING THE HEADER IMAGE ........................................................................................................................... 137
HEADER IMAGE SPECIFICATIONS........................................................................................................................... 138
HEADER ART .............................................................................................................................................................. 139
HEADER ART COPYRIGHTS...................................................................................................................................... 139
DESIGNING YOUR OWN HEADER ART ................................................................................................................. 139
HIDING THE HEADER TEXT .................................................................................................................................... 140
MAKING THE WHOLE HEADER CLICKABLE ........................................................................................................ 140
ROTATING HEADER IMAGES ................................................................................................................................... 142
ADDING NAVIGATION TO YOUR HEADER .......................................................................................................... 142
HEADER TIPS .............................................................................................................................................................. 143
Glossary of Terms and Concepts ....................................................................................................... 146
ABSOLUTE PATH ........................................................................................................................................................ 146
APACHE ........................................................................................................................................................................ 146
ASCII ............................................................................................................................................................................ 146
ATOM ............................................................................................................................................................................ 146
AVATAR ........................................................................................................................................................................ 146
BINARIES ...................................................................................................................................................................... 146
BLOG............................................................................................................................................................................. 147
BLOGGING................................................................................................................................................................... 147
BLOGOSPHERE............................................................................................................................................................ 147
BLOGROLL ................................................................................................................................................................... 147
BOOKMARKLET .......................................................................................................................................................... 147
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CATEGORY .................................................................................................................................................................. 147
CAPABILITIES .............................................................................................................................................................. 147
CGI ............................................................................................................................................................................... 147
CHARACTER ENTITY ................................................................................................................................................. 148
CHARACTER SET ......................................................................................................................................................... 148
CHMOD ......................................................................................................................................................................... 148
COLLATION ................................................................................................................................................................. 148
COMMENTS .................................................................................................................................................................. 148
CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM ........................................................................................................................ 149
CPANEL ........................................................................................................................................................................ 149
CSS ................................................................................................................................................................................ 149
DATABASE ................................................................................................................................................................... 149
DEPRECATED .............................................................................................................................................................. 149
DIV ............................................................................................................................................................................... 149
EXCERPT ...................................................................................................................................................................... 149
FEED ............................................................................................................................................................................. 150
FTP ............................................................................................................................................................................... 150
GALLERY ...................................................................................................................................................................... 150
GMT ............................................................................................................................................................................. 150
GRAVATAR................................................................................................................................................................... 150
HACK ............................................................................................................................................................................ 150
HACKING ..................................................................................................................................................................... 151
.HTACCESS .................................................................................................................................................................... 151
HTML........................................................................................................................................................................... 151
IP ADDRESS ................................................................................................................................................................. 151
JAVASCRIPT.................................................................................................................................................................. 152
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LINUX ........................................................................................................................................................................... 152
META ............................................................................................................................................................................ 152
MOD_REWRITE............................................................................................................................................................ 152
MYSQL ......................................................................................................................................................................... 152
NEWS READER ............................................................................................................................................................ 152
OPEN SOURCE ............................................................................................................................................................ 153
PAGE ............................................................................................................................................................................. 153
PERMALINK ................................................................................................................................................................. 153
PERMISSIONS ............................................................................................................................................................... 153
PHP ............................................................................................................................................................................... 153
PHPMYADMIN ............................................................................................................................................................. 154
PING.............................................................................................................................................................................. 154
PINGBACK.................................................................................................................................................................... 154
PLUGIN ......................................................................................................................................................................... 154
PORT ............................................................................................................................................................................. 154
POST SLUG ................................................................................................................................................................... 154
POST STATUS ............................................................................................................................................................... 155
QUICKTAG .................................................................................................................................................................. 155
RELATIVE PATH ......................................................................................................................................................... 155
RELATIVE URI ............................................................................................................................................................ 155
RSS ................................................................................................................................................................................ 155
ROBOTS.TXT ................................................................................................................................................................ 156
SIDEBAR ....................................................................................................................................................................... 156
SLUG ............................................................................................................................................................................. 156
SMILEYS ........................................................................................................................................................................ 156
SPAM ............................................................................................................................................................................. 156
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SSH ............................................................................................................................................................................... 157
SSL ................................................................................................................................................................................ 157
TAG ............................................................................................................................................................................... 157
TAGLINE ...................................................................................................................................................................... 157
TEXT EDITOR .............................................................................................................................................................. 157
THEME.......................................................................................................................................................................... 158
TRACKBACK ................................................................................................................................................................ 158
UNICODE ..................................................................................................................................................................... 158
WEB SERVER................................................................................................................................................................ 159
XFN .............................................................................................................................................................................. 159
XML .............................................................................................................................................................................. 159
XML-RPC .................................................................................................................................................................... 159
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About this Book
This user’s guide is a derivative work based heavily on documentation made available under GPL from
http://codex.wordpress.org. The content, format, and organization have been edited some from its
original form. This guide is being made available under the same GPL licenses as the original work. This
book comes without warranty or guarantee…use at your own risk.
A free digital version of this text is available for download at: http://educhalk.org
Neither this product, nor its author, is affiliated with, or endorsed by, WordPress. WordPress is a
trademark owned by Automattic, Inc.
About WordPress
WordPress is a powerful personal publishing platform, and it comes with a great set of features
designed to make your experience as a publisher on the Internet as easy, pleasant and appealing as
possible. We are proud to offer you a freely distributed, standards‐compliant, fast, light and free
personal publishing platform, with sensible default settings and features, and an extremely
customizable core.
WordPress is designed to be installed on your own web server or shared hosting account, which gives
you complete control over the weblog. Unlike third‐party hosted services, you can be sure of being
able to access and modify everything related to your weblog, in case you need to. This also means that
you can install WordPress on your desktop or home computer, or even on an Intranet. Open Source
WordPress is open source software, licensed under the GPL.
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Chapter 1: Introduction to Blogging
What is a "blog"?
"Blog" is an abbreviated version of "weblog," which is a term used to describe web sites that maintain
an ongoing chronicle of information. A blog is a frequently updated, personal website featuring diary‐
type commentary and links to articles on other Web sites. Blogs range from the personal to the
political, and can focus on one narrow subject or a whole range of subjects.
Many blogs focus on a particular topic, such as web design, home staging, sports, or mobile
technology. Some are more eclectic, presenting links to all types of other sites. And others are more
like personal journals, presenting the author's daily life and thoughts.
Generally speaking (although there are exceptions), blogs tend to have a few things in common:
A main content area with articles listed chronologically, newest on top. Often, the articles are
organized into categories.
• An archive of older articles.
• A way for people to leave comments about the articles.
• A list of links to other related sites, sometimes called a "blogroll".
• One or more "feeds" like RSS, Atom or RDF files.
Some blogs may have additional features beyond these. Watch this short video for a simple
explanation for what a blog is.
The Blog Content
Content is the raison d'être for any web site. Retail sites feature a catalog of products. University sites
contain information about their campuses, curriculum, and faculty. News sites show the latest news
stories. For a personal blog, you might have a bunch of observations, or reviews. Without some sort of
updated content, there is little reason to visit a web site more than once.
On a blog, the content consists of articles (also sometimes called "posts" or "entries") that the
author(s) writes. Yes, some blogs have multiple authors, each writing his/her own articles. Typically,
blog authors compose their articles in a web‐based interface, built into the blogging system itself.
Some blogging systems also support the ability to use stand‐alone "weblog client" software, which
allows authors to write articles offline and upload them at a later time.
Comments
Want an interactive website? Wouldn't it be nice if the readers of a website could leave comments,
tips or impressions about the site or a specific article? With blogs, they can! Posting comments is one
of the most exciting features of blogs.
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Most blogs have a method to allow visitors to leave comments. There are also nifty ways for authors of
other blogs to leave comments without even visiting the blog! Called "pingbacks" or "trackbacks", they
can inform other bloggers whenever they cite an article from another site in their own articles. All this
ensures that online conversations can be maintained painlessly among various site users and websites.
The Difference Between a Blog and CMS?
Software that provides a method of managing your website is commonly called a CMS or "Content
Management System". Many blogging software programs are considered a specific type of CMS. They
provide the features required to create and maintain a blog, and can make publishing on the internet
as simple as writing an article, giving it a title, and organizing it under (one or more) categories. While
some CMS programs offer vast and sophisticated features, a basic blogging tool provides an interface
where you can work in an easy and, to some degree, intuitive manner while it handles the logistics
involved in making your composition presentable and publicly available. In other words, you get to
focus on what you want to write, and the blogging tool takes care of the rest of the site management.
WordPress is one such advanced blogging tool and it provides a rich set of features. Through its
Administration Panels, you can set options for the behavior and presentation of your weblog. Via these
Administration Panels, you can easily compose a blog post, push a button, and be published on the
internet, instantly! WordPress goes to great pains to see that your blog posts look good, the text looks
beautiful, and the html code it generates conforms to web standards.
If you're just starting out, read Getting Started with WordPress, which contains information on how to
get WordPress set up quickly and effectively, as well as information on performing basic tasks within
WordPress, like creating new posts or editing existing ones.
Things Bloggers Need to Know
In addition to understanding how your specific blogging software works, such as WordPress, there are
some terms and concepts you need to know.
Archives
A blog is also a good way to keep track of articles on a site. A lot of blogs feature an archive based on
dates (like a monthly or yearly archive). The front page of a blog may feature a calendar of dates linked
to daily archives. Archives can also be based on categories featuring all the articles related to a specific
category.
It does not stop there; you can also archive your posts by author or alphabetically. The possibilities are
endless. This ability to organize and present articles in a composed fashion is much of what makes
blogging a popular personal publishing tool.
Feeds
A Feed is a function of special software that allows "Feedreaders" to access a site automatically looking
for new content and then post updates about that new content to another site. This provides a way for
users to keep up with the latest and hottest information posted on different blogging sites. Some
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Feeds include RSS (alternately defined as "Rich Site Summary" or "Really Simple Syndication"), Atom or
RDF files. Dave Shea, author of the web design weblog Mezzoblue has written a comprehensive
summary of feeds.
Blogrolls
A blogroll is a list, sometimes categorized, of links to webpages the author of a blog finds worthwhile
or interesting. The links in a blogroll are usually to other blogs with similar interests. The blogroll is
often in a "sidebar" on the page or featured as a dedicated separate web page. BlogRolling and blo.gs
are two websites that provide some interesting functions or help related to blogrolls. These sites
provide methods for users to maintain these rolls effortlessly and integrate them into weblogs.
WordPress has a built‐in Link Manager so users do not have to depend on a third party for creating and
managing their blogroll.
Syndication
A feed is a machine readable (usually XML) content publication that is updated regularly. Many
weblogs publish a feed (usually RSS, but also possibly Atom and RDF and so on, as described above).
There are tools out there that call themselves "feedreaders". What they do is they keep checking
specified blogs to see if they have been updated, and when the blogs are updated, they display the
new post, and a link to it, with an excerpt (or the whole contents) of the post. Each feed contains items
that are published over time. When checking a feed, the feedreader is actually looking for new items.
New items are automatically discovered and downloaded for you to read. Just so you don't have to
visit all the blogs you are interested in. All you have to do with these feedreaders is to add the link to
the RSS feed of all the blogs you are interested in. The feedreader will then inform you when any of
the blogs have new posts in them. Most blogs have these "Syndication" feeds available for the readers
to use.
Managing Comments
One of the most exciting features of blogging tools are the comments. This highly interactive feature
allows users to comment upon article posts and link to your posts and comment on and recommend
them. These are known as trackbacks and pingbacks. We'll also discuss how to moderate and manage
comments and how to deal with the annoying trend in "comment spam", when unwanted comments
are posted to your blog.
• Trackbacks
• Pingbacks
• Verifying Pingbacks and Trackbacks
• Comment Moderation
• Comment Spam
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Trackbacks
Trackbacks were originally developed by SixApart, creators of the MovableType blog package. SixApart
has a good introduction to trackbacks:
In a nutshell, TrackBack was designed to provide a method of notification between websites: it is a
method of person A saying to person B, "This is something you may be interested in." To do that,
person A sends a TrackBack ping to person B.
A better explanation is this:
• Person A writes something on their blog.
• Person B wants to comment on Person A's blog, but wants her own readers to see what she
had to say, and be able to comment on her own blog
• Person B posts on her own blog and sends a trackback to Person A's blog
• Person A's blog receives the trackback, and displays it as a comment to the original post. This
comment contains a link to Person B's post
The idea here is that more people are introduced to the conversation (both Person A's and Person B's
readers can follow links to the other's post), and that there is a level of authenticity to the trackback
comments because they originated from another weblog. Unfortunately, there is no actual verification
performed on the incoming trackback, and indeed they can even be faked.
Most trackbacks send to Person A only a small portion (called an "excerpt") of what Person B had to
say. This is meant to act as a "teaser", letting Person A (and his readers) see some of what Person B
had to say, and encouraging them all to click over to Person B's site to read the rest (and possibly
comment).
Person B's trackback to Person A's blog generally gets posted along with all the comments. This means
that Person A can edit the contents of the trackback on his own server, which means that the whole
idea of "authenticity" isn't really solved. (Note: Person A can only edit the contents of the trackback on
his own site. He cannot edit the post on Person B's site that sent the trackback.)
Pingbacks
Pingbacks were designed to solve some of the problems that people saw with trackbacks. The official
pingback documentation makes pingbacks sound an awful lot like trackbacks:
For example, Yvonne writes an interesting article on her Web log. Kathleen reads Yvonne's article and
comments about it, linking back to Yvonne's original post. Using pingback, Kathleen's software can
automatically notify Yvonne that her post has been linked to, and Yvonne's software can then include
this information on her site.
There are three significant differences between pingbacks and trackbacks, though.
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• Pingbacks and trackbacks use drastically different communication technologies (XML‐RPC and
HTTP POST, respectively).
• Pingbacks support auto‐discovery where the software automatically finds out the links in a
post, and automatically tries to pingback those URLs, while trackbacks must be done manually
by entering the trackback URL that the trackback should be sent to.
• Pingbacks do not send any content.
The best way to think about pingbacks is as remote comments:
• Person A posts something on his blog.
• Person B posts on her own blog, linking to Person A's post. This automatically sends a pingback
to Person A when both have pingback enabled blogs.
• Person A's blog receives the pingback, then automatically goes to Person B's post to confirm
that the pingback did, in fact, originate there.
The pingback is generally displayed on Person A's blog as simply a link to Person B's post. In this way,
all editorial control over posts rests exclusively with the individual authors (unlike the trackback
excerpt, which can be edited by the trackback recipient). The automatic verification process introduces
a level of authenticity, making it harder to fake a pingback.
Some feel that trackbacks are superior because readers of Person A's blog can at least see some of
what Person B has to say, and then decide if they want to read more (and therefore click over to
Person B's blog). Others feel that pingbacks are superior because they create a verifiable connection
between posts.
Verifying Pingbacks and Trackbacks
Comments on blogs are often criticized as lacking authority, since anyone can post anything using any
name they like: there's no verification process to ensure that the person is who they claim to be.
Trackbacks and Pingbacks both aim to provide some verification to blog commenting.
Comment Moderation
Comment Moderation is a feature which allows the website owner and author to monitor and control
the comments on the different article posts, and can help in tackling comment spam. It lets you
moderate comments, & you can delete unwanted comments, approve cool comments and make other
decisions about the comments.
Comment Spam
Comment Spam refers to useless comments (or trackbacks, or pingbacks) to posts on a blog. These are
often irrelevant to the context value of the post. They can contain one or more links to other websites
or domains. Spammers use Comment Spam as a medium to get higher page rank for their domains in
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Google, so that they can sell those domains at a higher price sometime in future or to obtain a high
ranking in search results for an existing website.
Spammers are relentless; because there can be substantial money involved, they work hard at their
"job." They even build automated tools (robots) to rapidly submit their spam to the same or multiple
weblogs. Many webloggers, especially beginners, sometimes feel overwhelmed by Comment Spam.
There are solutions, though, to avoiding Comment Spam. WordPress includes many tools for
combating Comment Spam. With a little up front effort, Comment Spam can be manageable, and
certainly no reason to give up weblogging.
Pretty Permalinks
Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual weblog posts, as well as categories and other
lists of weblog postings. A permalink is what another weblogger will use to refer to your article (or
section), or how you might send a link to your story in an e‐mail message. Because others may link to
your individual postings, the URL to that article shouldn't change. Permalinks are intended to be
permanent (valid for a long time).
"Pretty" Permalinks is the idea that URLs are frequently visible to the people who click them, and
should therefore be crafted in such a way that they make sense, and not be filled with
incomprehensible parameters. The best Permalinks are "hackable," meaning a user might modify the
link text in their browser to navigate to another section or listing of the weblog. For example, this is
how the default Permalink to a story might look in a default WordPress installation:
/index.php?p=423
How is a user to know what "p" represents? Where did the number 423 come from?
In contrast, here is a well‐structured, "Pretty" Permalink which could link to the same article, once the
installation is configured to modify permalinks:
/archives/2003/05/23/my‐cheese‐sandwich/
One can easily guess that the Permalink includes the date of the posting, and the title, just by looking
at the URL. One might also guess that hacking the URL to be /archives/2003/05/ would get a list of all
the postings from May of 2003. Pretty (cool). For more information on possible Permalink patterns in
WordPress, see Using Permalinks.
Blog by email
Some blogging tools offer the ability to email your posts directly to your blog, all without direct
interaction through the blogging tool interface. WordPress offers this cool feature. Using email, you
can now send in your post content to a pre‐determined email address & voila! Your post is published!
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Post Slugs
If you're using Pretty Permalinks, the Post Slug is the title of your article post within the link. The
blogging tool software may simplify or truncate your title into a more appropriate form for using as a
link. A title such as "I'll Make A Wish" might be truncated to "ill‐make‐a‐wish". In WordPress, you can
change the Post Slug to something else, like "make‐a‐wish", which sounds better than a wish made
when sick.
Excerpt
Excerpts are condensed summaries of your blog posts, with blogging tools being able to handle these
in various ways. In WordPress, Excerpts can be specifically written to summarize the post, or
generated automatically by using the first few paragraphs of a post or using the post up to a specific
point, assigned by you.
Plugins
Plugins are cool bits of programming scripts that add additional functionality to your blog. These are
often features which either enhance already available features or add them to your site.
WordPress offers simple and easy ways of adding Plugins to your blog. From the Administration Panel,
there is a Plugin Page. Once you have uploaded a Plugin to your WordPress plugin directory, activate it
from the Plugins Management SubPanel, and sit back and watch your Plugin work. Not all Plugins are
so easily installed, but WordPress Plugin authors and developers make the process as easy as possible.
Basics‐A Few Blogging Tips
Starting a new blog is difficult and this can put many people off, there are then other people who have
blogs with no comments or visits. You want to stand out from this crowd of millions of bloggers, you
want to be one of the few hundred thousand blogs that are actually visited. So here are some simple
tips to help you on your way to blogging mastery:
• Post regularly, but don't post if you have nothing worth posting about.
• Stick with only a few specific genres to talk about.
• Don't put 'subscribe' and 'vote me' links all over the front page until you have people that like
your blog enough to ignore them (they're usually just in the way).
• Use a clean and simple theme if at all possible.
• Enjoy, blog for fun, comment on other peoples' blogs (as they normally visit back).
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Chapter 2: WordPress Semantics
Introduction to WordPress Terminology
WordPress was created by the developers as weblogging or blogging software. A blog, as defined in
the Codex Glossary, is an online journal, diary, or serial, published by a person or group of people.
Many blogs are personal in nature, reflecting the opinions and interests of the owner. But, blogs are
now important tools in the world of business, politics, and entertainment.
Blogs are a form of a Content Management System (CMS) which Wikipedia calls "a system used to
organize and facilitate collaborative content creation." Both blogs and Content Management Systems
can perform the role of a website (site for short). A website can be thought of as a collection of articles
and information about a specific subject, service, or product, which may not be a personal reflection of
the owner.
Terminology Related to Content
The term Word in WordPress refers to the words used to compose posts. Posts are the principal
element (or content) of a blog. The posts are the writings, compositions, discussions, discourses,
musings, and, yes, the ratings of the blog's owner and guest authors. Posts, in most cases, are the
reason a blog exists; without posts, there is no blog!
To facilitate the post writing process, WordPress provides a full featured authoring tool with modules
that can be moved, via drag‐and‐drop, to fit the needs of all authors. The Dashboard QuickPress
module makes it easy to quickly write and publish a post. There's no excuse for not writing.
Integral to a blog are the pictures, images, sounds, and movies, otherwise known as media. Media
enhances, and gives life to a blog's content. WordPress provides an easy to use method of inserting
Media directly into posts, and a method to upload Media that can be later attached to posts, and a
Media Manager to manage those various Media.
An important part of the posting process is the act of assigning those posts to categories. Each post in
WordPress is filed under one or more categories. Categories can be hierarchical in nature, where one
category acts as a parent to several child, or grandchild, categories. Thoughtful categorization allows
posts of similar content to be grouped, thereby aiding viewers in the navigation, and use of a site. In
addition to categories, terms or keywords called tags can be assigned to each post. Tags act as another
navigation tool, but are not hierarchical in nature.
In turn, post categories and tags are two of the elements of what's called post meta data. Post meta
data refers to the information associated with each post and includes the author's name and the date
posted as well as the post categories. Post meta data also refers to Custom Fields where you assign
specific words, or keys, that can describe posts. But, you can't mention post meta data without
discussing the term meta.
Generally, meta means "information about"; in WordPress, meta usually refers to administrative‐type
information. So, besides post meta data, Meta is the HTML tag used to describe and define a web page
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to the outside world, like meta tag keywords for search engines. Also, many WordPress‐based sites
offer a Meta section, usually found in the sidebar, with links to login or register at that site. And, don't
forget Meta Rules: The rules defining the general protocol to follow in using this Codex, or Meta, as in
the MediaWiki namespace that refers to administrative functions within Codex. That's a lot of Meta!
After a post is made public, a blog's readers will respond, via comments, to that post, and in turn,
authors will reply. Comments enable the communication process, that give‐and‐take, between author
and reader. Comments are the life‐blood of most blogs.
Finally, WordPress also offers a content management tool called a Page. Pages often present static
information, such as "About Me", or "Contact Us", Pages. Typically "timeless" in nature, Pages should
not be confused with the time‐oriented objects called posts. Interestingly, a Page is allowed to be
commented upon, but a Page cannot be categorized.
Terminology Related to Design
The flexibility of WordPress is apparent when discussing terminology related to the design of a
WordPress blog. At the core of WordPress, developers created a programming structure named The
Loop to handle the processing of posts. The Loop is the critical PHP program code used to display
posts. Anyone wanting to enhance and customize WordPress will need to understand the mechanics of
The Loop.
Along with The Loop, WordPress developers have created Template Tags which are a group of PHP
functions that can be invoked by designers to perform an action or display specific information. It is
the Template Tags that form the basis of the Template Files. Templates (files) contain the
programming pieces, such as Template Tags, that control the structure and flow of a WordPress site.
These files draw information from your WordPress MySQL database and generate the HTML code
which is sent to the web browser. A Template Hierarchy, in essence the order of processing, dictates
how Templates control almost all aspects of the output, including Headers, Sidebars, and Archives.
Archives are a dynamically generated list of posts, and are typically grouped by date, category, tag, or
author.
Templates and Template Tags are two of the pieces used in the composition of a WordPress Theme. A
Theme is the overall design of a site and encompasses color, graphics, and text. A Theme is sometimes
called the skin. With the recent advances in WordPress, Theme Development has become a hot topic.
WordPress‐site owners have available a long list of Themes to choose from in deciding what to present
to their sites' viewers. In fact, with the use of a Theme Switcher Revisited Plugin, WordPress designers
can allow their visitors to select their own Theme.
Plugins are custom functions created to extend the core functionality of WordPress. The WordPress
developers have maximized flexibility and minimized code bloat by allowing outside developers the
opportunity to create their own useful add‐on features. As evidenced by the Plugin Directory, there's a
Plugin to enhance virtually every aspect of WordPress. A Plugin management tool makes it extremely
easy to find and install Plugins.
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Terminology for the Administrator
Another set of terms to examine are those involving the Administration of a WordPress site. A
comprehensive set of Administration Panels enables users to easily administer and monitor their blog.
A WordPress administrator has a number of powers which include requiring a visitor to register in
order to participate in the blog, who can create new posts, whether comments can be left, and if files
can be uploaded to the blog. An Administrator also defines Links and the associated Link Categories
which are an important part of a blog's connection to the outside world.
Some of the main administrative responsibilities of a WordPress blog involve adding, deleting, and
managing Registered Users. Administering users means controlling Roles and Capabilities, or
permissions. Roles control what functions a registered user can perform as those functions can range
from just being able to login at a blog to performing the role administrator.
Another chief concern for the blog administrator is Comment Moderation. Comments, also called
discussions, are responses to posts left for the post author by the visitor and represent an important
part of "the give and take" of a blog. But Comments must be patrolled for Spam and other malicious
intentions. The WordPress Administration Comments SubPanel simplifies that process with easy‐to‐
use screens which add, change, and delete Comments.
And not to be forgotten is the obligation for an administrator to keep their WordPress current to
insure that the latest features, bugs, and security fixes are in effect. To accommodate administrators,
WordPress has a simple Upgrade Tool to download and install the latest version of WordPress. There's
no excuse to not upgrade!
The Terminology of Help
The final set of jargon relates to helping you with WordPress. There are many help resources available
to WordPress users; Getting More Help, Finding WordPress Help, Troubleshooting, and WordPress
FAQ (frequently asked questions) are good starting points. Also Getting Started with WordPress will
jump‐start readers into the world of WordPress and the excellent WordPress Lessons provide in‐depth
tutorials on many of the aspects of using WordPress. Among the most important resources is the
WordPress Support Forum where knowledgeable volunteers answer your questions and help solve any
problems related to WordPress. And, of course, this Codex which is filled with hundreds of articles
designed to make your WordPress experience a success!
History of the WordPress Name
Besides the technical terminology of WordPress, it's also interesting to know the history of the name,
WordPress. The name "WordPress" was originally coined by Christine Selleck (see related post) in
response to developer Matthew Mullenweg's desire to associate his new software project with
printing presses. In this sense, press refers to the world of reporters, journalists, columnists, and
photographers. An aptly chosen name, because WordPress serves as the printing press that enables its
users to publish their words. It's a good name, don't you think so?
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Chapter 3: Installing WordPress
System Recommendations
PHP (version 4.3 or newer) and MySQL(version 4.0 or newer) are required. Apache mod_rewrite
module is optional, but necessary to create clean URIs known as Permalinks.
We recommend Linux with either the Apache or nginx web‐servers as the most robust platforms for
running WordPress, but any server that supports PHP and MySQL will do. If your host doesn’t support
one of these platforms, and mod_rewrite, you will probably be better off switching to one of the many
hosting providers that do offer those choices. It is also essential that your host allows making remote
connections.
You will need access to your site and its directory, and software to proceed with the installation. These
are:
• An access to your web server (via shell or FTP)
• A text editor
• An FTP Client (if you need to install WordPress on a remote server)
• Your web browser of choice (Recommended: most recent versions of Firefox or Chrome)
Prerequisite for Uploading Files: In order to use all the media upload tools to store media files in your
WordPress installation, you will have to change the chmod of wp‐content folder to 777. If you have not
changed permissions in order to write in wp‐content folder, you will not be able to use the uploader.
Instructions for this can be found in the Codex.
5‐Minute Install
The Famous 5‐minute Install consists of the following steps:
1. Download and unzip the WordPress package, if you haven’t already.
2. Create a database for WordPress on your web server, as well as a MySQL user who has all
privileges for accessing and modifying it.
3. Rename the wp‐config‐sample.php file to wp‐config.php.
4. Open wp‐config.php in your favorite text editor and fill in your database details.
5. 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.
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• 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.
6. 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.
For Step‐by‐Step video install directions see: http://educhalk.org/blog/?p=1
To Upgrade from a previous version of WordPress, see: http://educhalk.org/blog/?tag=upgrade
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Chapter 4: Getting Started
Overview of the Administration Panel
Once you’ve installed WordPress, you’ll log in to your Administration Panel. This is the application you
will use to create content, manage your blog’s design, moderate comments, and generally oversee
your blog. The Administration Panel has been completely redesigned in WordPress 2.8 to provide a
faster, easier experience when managing your blog. If you have used similar software before, you
should have no trouble getting around, but even new users will have an easy time getting up to speed.
Individual screens will be covered in more depth in the handbook sections related to their use, but
before you get started, an overview of how the Administration Panel is structured may be useful,
especially if you’re used to using an older version of WordPress.
General Structure
The Administration Panel is divided into several main areas. The header is the dark bar across the top
of your screen that contains the name of the blog you’re administering. On the left is the main menu.
The bulk of the screen provides the working area, in which individual screen content will appear. At
the bottom of the screen is another dark bar called the footer. This structure is consistent throughout
the application.
Navigation
Menu Groups
WordPress 2.8 has a multi‐modal navigation system to allow fast access to every screen in the
application. The main menu column on the left is the primary method of navigation, and is divided into
three groups of navigation sections.
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The Overview group by default contains only the Dashboard section, though plugins may add
additional sections to this group (and WordPress MU uses this group for its Site Admin section). The
Overview group is divided from the group below by a thin gray line with an arrowhead on its left side.
The Content Objects group consists of Posts, Media, Links, Pages and Comments by default, though
again, plugins may add additional objects to this group. This group contains the sections where site
content is created and managed, and is divided from the group below by another thing gray line.
The third group is the Utilities group, which contains sections related to overall site administration
rather than content creation. Sections included here by default are Appearance, Plugins, Users, Tools,
and Settings.
Main Menu Functions
The main menu is designed to work in three different ways, so that every user can choose the style of
menu interaction they prefer. From the simplest to more advanced, the three options are:
Basic
Click on the text links or their corresponding icons in the main menu (Dashboard, Posts, Media, Links,
Pages, etc.) to go to the first screen in that section. This is usually an overview screen that allows
management of that section. When you have arrived at this screen, the main menu will have expanded
to show the screens that comprise that section, and will have highlighted your current screen. The icon
will also be repeated in the screen heading that is displayed in the working area. You can click on the
text links in the menu to go to other screens in that section or to choose a different section altogether.
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Expand/Collapse
You don’t need to go to a section’s default screen in order to access other screens in a section. When
your mouse hovers over a navigation item in the main menu, a small arrow appears to the right of the
text link. Clicking this arrow will cause that section’s menu to appear below the section header.
Clicking the arrow again will hide the section menu. Section menus will still expand automatically when
you visit a specific section, and close when you leave it, but if you have opened a section by clicking the
arrow, it will stay open until you click to close it, even if you leave that section. This allows you to keep
open the sections that you use the most. A browser cookie will remember your menu state between
sessions. Bear in mind that the more sections you have open, the longer the menu will be, which may
require scrolling to get to some menu sections. Because of this, you may find it most convenient to
keep most sections closed by default.
Minimized
If your screen is not very wide or is running at a low resolution, you may wish to increase your
horizontal working area. To support this, the minimized menu mode allows you to collapse the left
menu column into a thin row of icons. The thin gray lines that divide the navigation groups act as a
toggle for this menu state. Click on either of the small gray arrows, and the menu will minimize to the
icon row. In this state, hovering over an icon will cause the section menu to popup to the right of the
cursor, allowing you continued access to virtually every screen in the application. To return the menu
to its normal state, just click on one of the small gray arrows (now pointing to the right).
You don’t need to adjust a setting to turn these options on or off. You can use the menu in any one or
all of these ways as it suits you.
Shortcuts Menu
In the header of the application there is an additional menu of shortcuts, located toward the right side
of the screen. This menu has a dual function. The default menu state of New Post acts as a button
providing single‐click access to the post creation screen. If you hover over the arrow on the right side
of the button, a shortcuts menu will appear with links to frequently accessed screens. The default
screens available from this menu are New Post, Drafts, Comments, Upload (Media Files), and New
Page. Plugins may also add items to this menu. Clicking on any of these links will load the appropriate
screen.
Other Navigation
Additional navigation links in the header area include:
WordPress W mark
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Provides links to wordpress.org, the Codex, and the Support Forums
Blog Title
Links to your blog’s home page
Username
Right after “Howdy,” your name links to your profile in the administration panel (the default username
is admin)
Log Out
Logs you out of your administration panel and takes you to a login
screen
Screen Options
Hanging tab below the header slides opens to reveal customization options that vary by screen
Help
Hanging tab below the header slides open to reveal contextual help for each screen as well as links to
the Codex (links to appropriate section of the Codex based on current screen) and the Support Forums
Customization
Many screens in the WordPress 2.8 administration panel can be customized to suit your use of the
application. On screens made up of modules, the modules can often be expanded or collapsed by
clicking on the title bar of the module, and modules can often be rearranged using drag and drop. In
the upper right is a tab labeled Screen Options, which appears on screens that allow customization.
These include screens made up of modules as well as screens that provide tables of information.
Clicking the Screen Options tab reveals a layer that lists modules or table columns that can be hidden
from view. Uncheck the box next to the element you wish to remove from your screen, and it will
disappear instantly. Check the box and the element will reappear on the screen. Screens that are
customized with these methods will retain their states between sessions.
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Dashboard
The Dashboard is the first screen you will see when you
log in to http://example.com/wp‐admin/. This screen
provides you an overview of the state of your site as well
as certain functionality. This screen is completely
customizable. The modules on the Dashboard include:
Right Now
This module gives you a listing of how much content exists
in your blog as well as status messages for your version of
WordPress, your theme and the number of widgets you
are using. Some plugins may also insert information here,
such as Akismet.
QuickPress
This module allows you to create a draft or publish a post
right from the Dashboard. You can enter a title, text,
media and tags. If you save as draft, the title will appear in
the Recent Drafts module
Recent Drafts
This module provides single‐click access to your most
recent drafts, as well as to a listing of all your drafts.
Recent Comments
This module shows the last 5 comments on your site, and allows you to moderate them right from the
Dashboard. You can approve/unapprove, edit, delete or reply, just as when you’re in the full
Comments section.
Your Stuff
This module provides an overview of recent content and activity on your site.
Incoming Links
This module displays new incoming links to your site, powered by Google.
WordPress Development Blog and Other WordPress News
These modules are for feeds, and are pre‐populated with feeds for the wordpress.org/development
blog and for the Planet WordPress aggregator blog. You can configure how these feeds display by
clicking the link that appears when you hover over the module title bar. You can also replace these
feeds with other RSS feeds by replacing the feed URLs in the configuration view.
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Plugins
This module displays three plugins pulled from the official plugin repository with links to install each
one.
Defining Your Settings
There are a number of settings that define how your blog will be displayed and/or how the
administration panel will display information to you. Before you begin creating content, you will want
to change some of these settings. Each of the Settings screens is described below, but you only need to
adjust those settings that you care about. For each screen, make sure you click the Save Changes
button before exiting the screen, or your changes will not be saved. Once you click the button, a
confirmation text box will appear at the top of the page telling you your settings have been saved.
Remember, the button must be clicked on every Settings screen.
General Settings
This is the default screen in the Settings section and controls some of the most basic configuration
settings for your site: your site’s title and location, who may register an account at your blog, and how
dates and times are calculated and displayed. You should definitely edit these settings. Go to Settings
→ General.
Blog title
Enter the name of your blog here. Most themes will display this title, at the top of every page, and in
the reader’s browser title bar. WordPress also uses this title as the identifying name for your
Syndication feeds.
Tagline
In a few words, explain what your blog is about. Your blog’s slogan, or tagline, might be entered here.
A tagline is short phrase, or sentence, used to convey the essence of the blog and is often funny or
eye‐catching.
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WordPress address (URL)
Enter the full URL of the directory containing your WordPress core application files (e.g., wp‐
config.php, wp‐admin/, wp‐content/, and wp‐includes/). For example, if you installed WordPress into a
directory called blog, then the WordPress address would be http://example.com/blog (where
example.com is your domain). If you installed WordPress into your web root, this address will be the
root URL http://example.com. WordPress will trim a slash (/) from the end.
E‐mail address
Enter the e‐mail address to which you want WordPress to send messages regarding the administration
and maintenance of your WordPress blog. For example, if you allow new users to register as a member
of your blog (see Membership below), then a notification will be sent through e‐mail to this address.
Please note this is different than the address you supplied for the admin user account; the admin
account e‐mail address is sent an e‐mail only when someone submits a comment to a post by admin.
The address you enter here will never be displayed on the blog.
Membership
Anyone can register — check this checkbox if you want anyone to be able to register an account on
your blog.
New User Default Role
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This pull‐down box allows you to select the default Role that is assigned to new users. This Default Role
will be assigned to newly registered members or users added via the Users → Authors & Users panel.
Valid choices are Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor, or Subscriber.
Time zone
Select your UTC (Controlled Universal Time) time zone from the drop‐down box. Unfortunately, you
have to manually update this for Daylight Savings Time. Lame, we know, but it will be fixed in the
future. Time zone represents the number of hours by which your time differs from the displayed UTC
time. This will ensure that your articles and blog maintain and display the correct time. This is useful
when you and your server are in different time zones. For example, if you were living in Tahiti (Lucky
you :) ), then you would select “UTC ‐10” in the pulldown box. Use UTC ‐5:30 if your time zone differs
by 5 hours and 30 minutes. You can use Time and Date to look up your offset from UTC.
Date Format
The format in which to display dates on your blog. The Date Format setting is intended to be used by
theme designers in displaying dates on your blog, but does not control how the date is displayed in the
Administrative panels (e.g. Edit Posts). Some common choices are available as radio buttons, or a
custom date format can be constructed using template tags.
Time Format
The format in which to display times on your blog. The Time Format setting is intended to be used by
theme designers in displaying time on your blog, but does not control how the time is displayed in the
Administrative panels (e.g. Add New Post edit of timestamp). Some common choices are available as
radio buttons, or a custom time format can be constructed using template tags.
Week Starts On
Select your preferred start date for WordPress calendars from the drop‐down box. Monday is the
default setting for this drop‐down, meaning a monthly calendar will show Monday in the first column.
If you want your calendar to show Sunday as the first column, then select Sunday from the drop‐down.
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings control the interface you use when writing new posts. These settings control
WordPress’s features in the Add Posts/Edit Posts SubPanels, as well as the optional functions like
Remote Publishing, Post via e‐mail, and Update Services. Go to Settings → Writing to edit these
settings.
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Administration Defaults
Size of the post box
Choose how large, in number of lines, you want for the post content textbox. Selecting a size does NOT
limit the size of the actual post; if you write a post that is longer than the size of the textbox, the
textbox will generate a scrollbar. A small textbox means everything will fit nicely on your screen, a
large textbox means you won’t have to scroll as much when writing longer posts.
Formatting
You can use these checkboxes to control some of your blog’s formatting:
• Convert emoticons such as :‐) and :‐P to graphics on display — checking this tells WordPress to
convert all of the emoticons in your posts into graphical smilies.
• WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically — checking this helps make
sure that what you write in your posts is valid XHTML code. You should probably check this box
since invalid code sometimes causes problems with web browsers.
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Note
Some Plugins may not work correctly when this feature is turned on.
Default Post Category
The Category you select from this drop‐down is called the default post Category. The default post
Category is Category assigned to a post if you fail to assign any other Categories with writing your
posts. If you have several Categories, but use one of those Categories more frequently, select that
Category here to make your life a little easier.
Default Link Category
The Category you select from this dropdown will be the default Link Category checked when you
create new Links. If you have several Categories, but assign one Category more frequently to Links,
select that Category.
Remote Publishing
To post to WordPress from a desktop blogging client or remote website that uses the Atom Publishing
Protocol or one of the XML‐RPC publishing interfaces you must enable them.
Atom Publishing Protocol
Checking this enables the Atom Publishing Protocol.
XML‐RPC
When checked, enables the WordPress, Movable Type, MetaWeblog and Blogger XML‐RPC publishing
protocols.
Post via e‐mail
With this option, you can set up your blog to publish e‐mails as blog posts. To do this, you would send
an e‐mail to a specific address you’ve established for the purpose. More than likely, you will need the
help of your web host and/or your e‐mail provider. This feature is 100% optional; you can still publish
posts from the Write Post SubPanel if you don’t want to post via e‐mail. The Blog by e‐mail article in
the Codex describes this feature in greater detail.
This message is displayed at the beginning of this section: “To post to WordPress by e‐mail you must
set up a secret e‐mail account with POP3 access. Any e‐mail received at this address will be posted, so
it’s a good idea to keep this address very secret.”
Complete the following fields to post by e‐mail:
Mail Server
A mail server receives e‐mails on your behalf and stores them for retrieval. Your mail server will have a
URI address, such as mail.example.com, which you should enter here.
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Port
Servers usually use port 110 to receive requests related to e‐mails. If your mail server uses a different
port, enter that port number here.
Login Name
If, for example, the e‐mail address that you will be using for the writing by e‐mail feature is
<wordpress@example.com>, then WordPress is the Login name.
Password
Enter the password for the above e‐mail address here. Three possible passwords are displayed by
WordPress in the introduction section of this panel.
Default Mail Category
WordPress will assign this Category to all of the posts published via the Post by e‐mail feature. Note:
You can create new Categories in Posts → Categories.
Press This
Press This is a bookmarklet that allows easy blogging of Web content. It provides the ability to excerpt
text from an online article, embed photos and other media files, and publish to you blog with links
back to the source material. To use Press This, drag the link to your browser’s bookmarks toolbar.
Then, when you want to blog about a particular site you’re on, click the link in your toolbar and the
Press This popup window will appear.
Update Services
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the update services of the sites listed
in the box. For more about this, see Update Services on the Codex. When entering services, separate
multiple URIs with line breaks. If your Blog Visibility (in Settings → Privacy) is set to “I would like to
block search engines, but allow normal visitors”, the message “WordPress is not notifying any Update
Services because of your blog’s privacy settings” is displayed.
Reading Settings
These options are few in number, but still important. You can decide if you want your chronological
posts or a “static” Page displayed as your blog’s front (main) page. You can also adjust how many posts
are displayed on that main page. In addition, you can adjust syndication feed features to determine
how the information from your site is sent to a reader’s web browser or other applications. Go to
Settings → Reading to edit these settings.
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Front page displays
Use this setting to determine if your posts or a “static” Page displays as your blog’s front (main) page.
This setting displays only if you have one or more Pages defined. Please note static front page plugins
and other “posts display” control/restriction plugins may affect how these features work!
Your latest posts
Check to radio button so your latest posts are displayed on the blog’s front page. Remember, the
number of posts you display is controlled by the “Blog pages show at most” setting.
A static page (select below)
Check this radio button to cause a “static” Page to be displayed as your blog’s front page. At the same
time, choose the Page that will display your actual Posts. The Front page and Posts page cannot be the
same value.
Front page
Select in the drop‐down box the actual Page that you want displayed as your front page. If you do not
select a choice here, then effectively your blog will show your posts on both the blog’s front page and
on the Posts page you specify. If you would like to create a static home page template file, do not
name it home.php, otherwise you will encounter problems when you try to view the “blog”/“posts”
section of your site. To get around this, just name it anything but home.php, for example,
myhome.php
Posts page
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Select in the drop‐down box the name of the Page that will now contain your Posts. If you do not
select a Page here, your Posts will only be accessible via other navigation features such as category,
calendar, or archive links.
Blog pages show at most
X posts
Enter the number the number of posts people will see when they download one of your site’s feeds.
For each article in a feed, show
Determines whether or not the feed will include the full article or just a summary.
Full text
Click this radio button to include the full content of each post.
Summary
Click this radio button to include a summary of the post. This could save bandwidth.
Encoding for pages and feeds
Enter the character encoding to set the choice of languages in which you, the other authors, and your
commenters, can write. The default (and safe choice) is “UTF‐8”, as that encoding supports a wide
variety of languages. If you wish to use some other character encoding (for example you have
imported or will import articles written using a different character encoding) then specify that here.
Caution should be used when changing this field as it may change the way information is displayed on
your blog. For a more in depth article on character encoding see Character encoding at Wikipedia.
Discussion Settings
These settings allow you to set the options concerning comments, pingbacks and trackbacks (also
called discussion). It is here the administrator decides if comments are allowed and/or require
moderation, if pingbacks and trackbacks are acceptable, and what constitutes Comment Spam. On this
screen you also control the circumstances under which your blog sends you e‐mail notification of
certain events at your site.
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Default article setting
These settings may be overridden for individual articles.
Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the article (slows down posting)
If you check this box, WordPress will send out a ping to a site or article you have linked to in your post.
Your mention of their site or article will show up in the comment section of their site, if that site allows
pingbacks. The notification occurs during the process of publishing your article to the internet. An
article with many hyperlinks will slow the posting process as WordPress contacts all of the sites before
the post is published.
Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks)
Check this box so WordPress accepts or declines the pings from other sites which may reference your
site or an article on your site. If this box is checked, pingbacks and trackbacks will appear in the
comments section of your posts.
Allow people to post comments on the article
Check this box if you wish to allow comments to your posts. Remember that this can be overridden for
individual articles. Comments can also be controlled by making an article PRIVATE, which requires the
appropriate password before a comment is allowed. If you don’t wish to allow comments uncheck this
setting.
Other comment settings
Comment author must fill out name and e‐mail
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Check this box as a way to force spammers to do a bit of extra work. In reality, the name and e‐mail
address are not verified in any way prior to the comment being submitted. Most legitimate
commenters are more than willing to fill out a name and e‐mail address.
Users must be registered and logged in to comment
If this checkbox is checked, only logged in registered users will be able to write comments on your site.
Automatically close comments on articles older than X days
Check the box and enter the number of days (e.g. 14 days) after which WordPress will automatically
flag eligible posts so that no more comments are accepted.
Enable threaded (nested) comments X levels deep
Check this box to enable threaded comments, then from the drop‐down box, select the number of
levels deep (maximum of 10 levels) you will allow for nested comments. Note that themes need to be
specially coded to properly display threaded comments.
Break comments into pages with X comments per page and the [last/first] page displayed by default.
Comments should be displayed with the [older/newer] comments at the top of each page
Check this box to cause comments to display in a paginated format with the specified number of
comments per page. In addition, specify if the pages should be ordered “first to last” or “last to first”,
and within each page, whether the oldest, or newest, comment is to be displayed first.
E‐mail me whenever
These two settings give you control of when you (or your authors) receive an e‐mail in regards to
comments about articles.
Anyone posts a comment
Check this box so that every single comment posted will generate an e‐mail to the author of that post.
Be warned that if your posts receive a large number of comments, you (or your authors) may find a
very full e‐mail Inbox. If you wish to micromanage comments, then by all means, activate this setting
by checking the box.
A comment is held for moderation
Check this box if you want WordPress to send notification that a comment is being held for
moderation. The e‐mail notification is sent to the E‐mail address listed in the Settings → General
SubPanel. This is useful if your blog has multiple authors and each author is authorized to allow or
decline comments. That way, you, the owner of the site, can review what comments are being allowed
or denied.
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Before a comment appears
These settings provide you even more control over the instances of when and how comments are
posted.
An administrator must always approve the comment
Select this option to force comments to be approved by a blog user or owner having the proper Role to
approve comments, even if the comments appear to be spam. See the section called “Comment
Moderation” below regarding spam.
Comment author must have a previously approved comment
Check the box to insure comments are only posted if the comment author’s e‐mail address matches
the address of a previously approved comment, otherwise, the comment is held for moderation.
Comments from blacklisted e‐mail addresses (those listed in the Local Spam Words Text Box) are held
for moderation regardless of whitelist status.
Comment Moderation
In the Comment Moderation section you specify these options to help you deal with Comment Spam.
Hold a comment in the queue if it contains X or more links (A common characteristic of comment spam
is a large number of hyperlinks.)
Not too long ago, comment spammers would have five, ten, or more hyperlinks in their comment
spam. This made it very easy for bloggers to quickly screen comments but spammers recognized that
and commonly use only one or two hyperlinks. You can enter a number in this box to tell WordPress
how many links you allow in a comment before holding it for moderation.
When a comment contains any of these words in its content, name, URL, e‐mail, or IP, it will be held in
the moderation queue. One word or IP per line. It will match inside words, so “press” will match
“WordPress”
In this text box you can add your own spam words which will filter the comments when posted. For an
extensive and updated list of frequently used spam words and phrases click the link to the article on
Spam Words; consider adding these to your own list.
Comment Blacklist
When a comment contains any of these words in its content, name, URL, e‐mail, or IP, it will be
marked as spam
One word or IP per line. It will match inside words, so “press” will match “WordPress”. This text box
acts the same as “When a comment contains any of these words…” except comments which match
these words will be deleted without warning. You may want to use this as a last resort, as genuine
comments can end up being deleted.
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Avatars
An avatar is an image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you
comment on avatar enabled sites. Here you can enable the display of avatars for people who comment
on your blog. By default WordPress uses Gravatars (short for Globally Recognized Avatars) for the
pictures that show up next to comments. Plugins may override this.
Avatar display
Don’t show Avatars
Check this radio button to suppress avatar display in comments.
Show Avatars
Check this so comment author avatars are displayed along with the comments.
Maximum Rating
This setting controls (or limits) the “highest” level or rating of gravatar you allow to be displayed.
G
Suitable for all audiences
PG
Possibly offensive, usually for audiences 13 and above
R
Intended for adult audiences above 17
X
Even more mature than above
Default Avatar
For users without a custom avatar of their own, you can either display a generic logo or a generated
one based on their e‐mail address.
• Mystery Man
• Blank
• Gravatar Logo
• Identicon (generated)
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• Wavatar (generated)
• MonsterID (generated)
Media Settings
These settings control basic aspects of media display. Go to Settings → Media to adjust these settings.
File links
Default media links
This setting determines where images, documents, and other media files will be linked to when
inserted into the body of a post. Check the appropriate radio button for None, Post URL, or File.
Image sizes
The sizes listed determine the maximum dimensions in pixels to use when inserting an image into the
body of a post. You can enter specific dimensions according to your preferences.
Thumbnail size
Enter the Width and Height
Crop thumbnail to exact dimensions (normally thumbnails are proportional)
Medium size
Enter the Max Width and Max Height
Large size
Enter the Max Width and Max Height
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Privacy Settings
The Privacy Settings control your blog’s visibility to search engines, such as Google and Technorati. You
can decide if you would like your blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google,
Sphere, Technorati) and archivers, or not. If you don’t want your blog available to the search engines
you can block search engines, but allow normal visitors to see your site. Go to Settings → Privacy to
adjust these settings.
I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Sphere, Technorati)
and archivers
Check this radio button so WordPress does not restrict search engines.
I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors
Check this to cause search engine spiders to ignore your site and to stop pings to ping‐o‐matic and any
other RPC ping services specified in the Update Services area of Settings → Writing. Checking this
option will Hide the Update Services option entirely on the Settings → Writing screen with the
message “WordPress is not notifying any Update Services because of your blog’s privacy settings.”
Permalink Settings
By default WordPress uses web URLs which have question marks and lots of numbers in them,
however WordPress offers you the ability to create a custom URL structure for your permalinks and
archives. This can improve the aesthetics, usability, and forward‐compatibility of your links. Go to
Settings → Permalinks in the main menu to edit the default permalink format.
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Check one of the radio buttons corresponding to choose from some common permalink structures for
your blog:
Default
An example of the default structure is http://example.com/?p=123
Day and name
An example of the day and name based structure is http://example.com/2008/03/31/sample‐post/
Month and name
An example of the month and name based structure is http://example.com/2008/03/sample‐post/
Numeric
An example of the numeric structure is http://example.com/archives/123
Custom structure
In the box specify the custom structure you desire to use. One example is
/archives/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/
Look at the Using Permalinks article in the Codex for further discussion of Permalink Structure Tags.
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Tip
You may enter custom bases for your category and tag URLs here. For example, using /topics/ as your
category base would make your category links like http://example.com/topics/uncategorized/. If you
leave these blank the defaults will be used. Again, see the Using Permalinks article for further
discussion of Permalink Structure Tags.
Category base
Enter a custom prefix for your category URLs here.
Tag base
Enter a custom prefix for your tag URLs here.
Miscellaneous Settings
WordPress has so many features, that some of them defy categorization. The file upload, links update
tracking, and support for custom “hacks” features can be controlled from this screen. Go to Settings →
Miscellaneous to edit these settings.
Uploading Files
Default settings used for during the media upload process when writing a post.
Store uploads in this folder
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Enter the folder (directory) to where you want to upload files with the Write → Write Post Upload
function. You must enter a folder relative to your WordPress address (URI) folder. WordPress suggests
an upload directory of wp‐content/uploads. Use the suggestion, or modify it to a relative path of your
choice. If your wp‐content folder is writeable, WordPress will automatically create this folder when
you do the first upload using the Posts → Add New media uploader function.
Full URL path to files (optional)
Enter a URL path to your uploaded files. This is optional only if the setting “Store uploads in this folder”
remains at its default value of wp‐content/uploads. Otherwise it must include the full path to the
upload file directory that a browser would see.
Organize my uploads into month‐ and year‐based folders
Check this box if you wish to organize your uploads into folders based on the year and the month of
the upload. Assuming that you have specified wp‐content/uploads as your upload storage folder, if you
check this box, a file uploaded in February of 2009 would be placed into the wp‐
content/uploads/2009/02 folder.
Note
At the time of the actual upload, WordPress will automatically create the folders, such as wp‐
content/uploads/2009 and wp‐content/uploads/2009/02, as long as your wp‐content folder is
writeable.
Track Links’ Update Times
Check this checkbox to activate WordPress’ link tracking feature. Blogs owners can report to some
central location when they have updated their site. WordPress can do this automatically for you (see
the section called “Update Services”). WordPress can then compare your links, (Links → Edit) with this
central location to determine if any of your links have been recently updated.
Defining Your Users
If you set up this blog, then when you logged in, you were greeted with, “Howdy, Admin!” The admin is
the default user name as well as the role. WordPress has five pre‐defined Roles: Administrator, Editor,
Author, Contributor, and Subscriber. Each Role is allowed to perform a set of tasks called Capabilities.
There are thirty Capabilities including publish_posts, moderate_comments, and edit_users. The
Capabilities are pre‐assigned to each Role.
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The Administrator Role is allowed to perform all possible Capabilities, including managing other users.
Each of the other Roles has a decreasing number of allowed Capabilities. If you are going to be the only
person using your blog, then you don’t need to create any additional users, and can just edit your
profile. If you will have multiple authors, though, you’ll need to set up your additional users. As the
blog owner, you should be an Administrator. You may choose to give the admin role to others who will
help you maintain the blog, but be aware that once you do, they have equal power and can even
delete you as a user. Be very cautious about giving someone admin access to your blog, and take
advantage of the other roles that are available.
If someone has added you to an existing blog, that person will have defined your role.
Summary of Roles
Administrator
Somebody who has access to all the administration features
Editor
Somebody who can publish posts, manage posts as well as manage other people’s posts, etc.
Author
Somebody who can publish and manage their own posts
Contributor
Somebody who can write and manage their posts but not publish posts or upload media files
Subscriber
Somebody who can read comments/comment/receive newsletters, etc.
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Note
Users will see diminished menu options when they are logged in based on their capabilities. For
example, an Administrator will see the same menu you do, but an Author will not see the menu
sections for functions they are unable to use, such as changing the blog appearance or adding new
users.
Adding a New User
Adding a new user to your blog is very easy. Go to Users → Add New in the main menu. Enter a
username for the person, his/her name, email address and the role you want to assign. You will also
enter a password, which can be changed when the new user logs in. The new user will receive an email
announcing the creation of the account, but you will need to provide the username and password.
Editing Your Profile
You should take a moment to edit your profile, where you can specify your name and how it will be
displayed on your site, your e‐mail address (for administrative purposes), other personal information,
and personal options. You can access your profile several ways. 1. Your name, linked in the upper right
of the screen. 2. Users → Your Profile in the main menu. 3. Users → Authors & Users then click on your
name in the table. Each of these ways takes you to your profile screen.
The only pieces of information WordPress requires you to include in your Profile are your e‐mail
address and a nickname. It should be noted that WordPress requires your email address only for your
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blog’s administration purposes. The e‐mail address is never sent to any other site (not even to the
people at WordPress headquarters), and it is never displayed on your site (unless you put it there
manually). Only the other registered users of your blog have access to the e‐mail address you provide.
Note
It is possible for a theme to display your e‐mail address (and the e‐mail addresses of your other
registered users) on your site, since the the_author_email template tag can be used for such purposes.
This would be a poorly conceived theme, however, if it didn’t inform you of that before you
downloaded it. Neither of the themes included with WordPress display any e‐mail address anywhere
on your site by default.
All of the other fields for personal information in your profile are optional, and, again, it is never sent
to any other site or person. It may be displayed on your site, however, depending on the theme you
use, so you should test things out with your particular theme if you’re at all nervous. Typically, themes
only display publicly the information you enter in the Display name field.
Personal Options
Visual Editor
Checking this box Disables the visual editor when writing, and uses the plain HTML editor. Note that
this checkbox changed at Version 2.7, as before you checked the box to enable the visual (WYSYWIG)
editor.
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Admin Color Scheme
Check the radio button next to the color scheme you’d like to use in the administrative panels. The
choices in WordPress 2.7 are Blue and Gray, with Gray being the default palette. Each color scheme
comes with its own set of unique icons.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Checking this box Enables keyboard shortcuts for comment moderation. Keyboard shortcuts are
designed to allow you to rapidly navigate and perform actions on comments, which are described in
the Comments chapter.
Name
Username
You cannot edit your Username because it is used as your Username during the login process. Even an
Administrator cannot change your Username. Usually, no one else ever needs to see your Username.
First name
Enter your first name in this text box.
Last name
Enter your last name in this text box.
Nickname
Enter the nickname as it is a required for every user. It may be the same as your User Name or it can
be different. If you don’t supply a Nickname, then the User Name will be placed in this field.
Display name publicly as
Select from the drop‐down, how your name should be cited on your blog. You can choose from several
of the above pieces of information: Nickname, Login name, First Name, Last Name, “First Last”, or
“Last First”. If you prefer “Last, First,” insert a comma after your last name in the Last Name text box
above and choose the last option from this dropdown.
Contact Info
E‐mail
All users are required to list an e‐mail address in their respective Profiles. Your blog will use this
address to notify you of new comments to your posts and for other administrative purposes. To
reiterate what was said above, only other registered users of your blog will have access to this e‐mail
address. It is never sent anywhere.
Website
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Enter your website address. If you supply nothing, then the field will default to just http://.
AIM
Enter your AIM screen name here.
Yahoo IM
Enter your Yahoo Messenger ID here.
Jabber / Google Talk
Enter your Jabber / Google Talk name here.
About Yourself
Biographical Info
Enter a short description or profile of yourself here. This optional information is not displayed by either
the default (Kubrick) Theme or the classic Theme included with WordPress. However, these themes
could be customized to display this description. Also, other themes available for download may
automatically display this information.
New Password
Enter your password twice, once in each of the two text boxes. Leaving these text boxes blank will
keep the password you are currently using.
Strength Indicator
This indicates if the password you entered is Very Weak, Weak, Medium, or Strong (displayed in
green). The stronger the password the more secure your login. Hint: Your password should be at least
seven characters long. To make it stronger, use upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols
like !"?$%^&).
Before You Leave
Remember to click the Update Profile button to save the changes you have made to your Profile and
Personal Options. After clicking this button you should see a splash message at the top of the screen
saying “User Updated”. If you don’t see that message, then your changes are not saved!
Managing Users
When you’ve been using your blog for a while, you may want to perform additional user management
tasks. Go to Users → Authors & Users in the main menu and you will come to a screen that lists all the
blog’s current users in a table. The table of Users contains the following columns:
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[ ] check box
Check this box if this user is to be affected by the Bulk Delete or Change User Role functions. There is
also a checkbox in the column header to the left of the text Username—click that checkbox to cause all
Users to be checked.
User Image
Avatar for this particular user.
Username
The login of the User. To edit a User, click on the Username link, the User’s Profile will then display for
you to make the necessary changes. Also note that if you hover the mouse anywhere over the whole
row for a particular user, the Edit and Delete links will appear. The current logged in user will not see
the Delete link appear when hovering over his/her own username (i.e., you can’t delete yourself).
Name
The first and last names of the User.
E‐mail
The User’s e‐mail address.
Role
The Role assigned to that User.
Posts
The number of Posts written by that User. Click on that number to be directed to the Edit Posts screen
to view or edit the Posts written by this User. All users have a unique identification number which
WordPress uses to identify users internally. To determine that User ID, hover the mouse over the Posts
number link, and the User ID (author=X) will be revealed as part of the URL in the browser status bar.
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Search Users
At the top right of the User Table is a search box to help find users. Enter a string in the box and click
the "Search users" box. Any User that contains the search string in the Username, Name, E‐mail, or
Website fields will be displayed, by Role. You can then add, change, or delete those users. A “No
matching users were found!” message will be displayed if no Users can be found that match the search
string you entered.
Filter Users
Just above the User Table, are filter links to All Users, and to links to Users belonging to the each of the
various Roles. Clicking on one of those links, say Subscribers, will display all the Users assigned the
Subscriber Role. Click on All Users to again display all the Users in the table.
Delete Users
At the top and bottom, of the table is the Bulk Actions dropdown menu. In this particular screen, only
the Delete action is allowed. Any User that has the checkbox (left of User Image/Username) checked
will be deleted when the Delete button is clicked. On clicking the Delete button, a Delete Users panel
will display with a message “You have specified these users for deletion:” with a list of the Users you
are deleting with the following question: What should be done with posts and links owned by this
user?
Delete all posts and links
Check this radio button and click the Confirm Deletion button to delete the User(s) as well as any posts
and links attributed to those User(s).
Attribute all posts and links to
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Check this radio button, select a User from the adjacent drop‐down box, and click the Confirm Deletion
button to attribute all the posts and links for the Deleted User(s) to the User you selected in the
pulldown box. Upon successful completion of the deletion process, a splash message box near the top
of the panel will display “x user(s) deleted”.
Change User Role
To the right of the Action dropdown menu is the “Change role to” dropdown menu . Select a Role, and
all the Users that have the checkbox (left of Username) checked will be changed to that Role upon
clicking the Change button. Upon successful completion of the changes, a splash box with the message
“Changed roles.” will display.
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Chapter 5: Creating Content
Once your blog is set up, it’s time to start creating your own original content. With WordPress 2.8 you
can create Posts (what most people think of when they think of blog content), Pages (for static
content, such as an “About Me” page), Media (you can upload images, videos, audio files and
documents and create galleries), and Links (blogrolls or lists of relevant sites to show in your sidebar).
In addition, Comments are content that is attached to a particular post, page or media file and is
created by either your readers or you (often in reply to a reader comment). You can use all of these
content types or only some of them; it’s up to you. This section will outline how to create and manage
your content using WordPress.
Posts
Creating a New Post
Creating a new post is very simple, though there are more advanced options available should you want
to use them. At its simplest, creating a post requires you to go to Posts → Add New from the main
menu (or click New Post button in the dark header area of the screen), enter a title and some text, and
click Publish. Each of the modules available on the post creation/editing screen is described below.
Title
The title of your post. You can use any words or phrases. Avoid using the same title twice as that will
cause problems. You can use commas, apostrophes, quotes, hypens/dashes, and other typical symbols
in the post like “My Site ‐ Here’s Lookin’ at You, Kid.” WordPress will clean it up for the link to the post,
called the post‐slug.
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Permalink
After you save your post, the Permalink below the title shows the potential URL for the post, as long as
you have permalinks enabled. (To enable permalinks, go to Settings → Permalinks.) The URL is
generated from your title. In previous versions of WordPress, this was referred to as the “page‐slug.”
The commas, quotes, apostrophes, and other non‐HTML favorable characters are changed and a dash
is put between each word. If your title is “My Site ‐ Here’s Lookin’ at You, Kid”, it will be cleaned up to
be “my‐site‐heres‐lookin‐at‐you‐kid” as the title. You can manually change this, maybe shortening it to
“my‐site‐lookin‐at‐you‐kid,” by clicking the Edit link that appears to the right of the permalink.
Post Editing Area
The big blank box where you enter your writing, links, links to images, and any information you want to
display on your site. You can use either the Visual (WYSIWYG) or the HTML view to compose your
posts and enter text. If you are not experienced with HTML, you may want to start by using the Visual
Editor, which uses the familiar icons common to word‐processing software to format your post. In
addition, WordPress is smart enough to convert character smileys like “:)” into the graphical image
counterparts.
A small row of icons to the left of the Visual/HTML tabs launch the media uploader, which allows you
to upload media into your post or embed it from a third‐party site such as YouTube. If you have
inserted media into the post, you can click on the image in the Visual editor to get additional editing
options such as resizing and aligning the image, or to delete the image. For more information on the
media uploader, skip ahead to the section called “Uploading Media Files”. At the bottom of the Visual
editor, the word count of the post is displayed, as is the last time the post was saved (including
autosaves).
The above elements are in a fixed position on the screen and cannot be moved. Other modules on the
screen, however, can be rearranged, collapsed/expanded or hidden using the Screen Options tab as
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you see fit. If you drag all the modules from the right column into the center, the center column will
expand to take up the width of both columns.
Tags
Enter tags by typing them into the empty field. You can enter multiple tags at once using commas to
separate individual tags. Click the Add button for tags to be added to the post. When tags are attached
to the post, they will appear beneath the text input field, with a small gray X to one side. Click the X to
remove a tag from a post.
Categories
The general topic the post can be classified in. Generally, bloggers have 7‐10 categories for their
content. Readers can browse specific categories to see all posts in the category. To select a
category/categories for the new post, just check the box(es) next to the category in your list. To add a
new category, click the +Add New Category link in this section. You can view all categories or your
most used categories in this module. If you have not specified a default category, the post will be
marked as “uncategorized.”
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Excerpt
A summary or brief teaser of your posts featured on the front page of your site as well as on the
category, archives, and search non‐single post pages. Note that the Excerpt does not usually appear by
default. It only appears in your post if you have changed the index.php template file to display the
Excerpt instead of the full Content of a post. If so, WordPress will automatically use the first 55 words
of your post as the Excerpt or up until the use of the More Quicktag mark. If you use an Explicit
Excerpt, this will be used no matter what. Just type the text you want to use as an excerpt into the text
box.
Trackbacks
A way to notify legacy blog systems that you’ve linked to them. If you link other WordPress blogs,
they’ll be notified automatically using pingbacks. No other action is necessary. For those blogs that
don’t recognize pingbacks, you can send a trackback to the blog by entering the website address(es) in
this box, separating each one by a space.
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Discussion
Options to enable interactivity and notification of your posts. This section hosts two check boxes:
Allowing Comments and Allowing Pings. If Allowing Comments is unchecked, no one can post
comments to this particular post. If Allowing Pings is unchecked, no one can post pingbacks or
trackbacks to this particular post. Check the boxes to allow comments and/or pings. If comments or
pings have come in for this post, they will appear in this module, and may be moderated here or from
the Comments screen.
Custom Fields
Custom Fields offer a way to add extra information to your site. In conjunction with extra code in your
template files or plugins, Custom Fields can modify the way a post is displayed. These are primarily
used by plugins, but you can manually edit that information in this section. Learn more about custom
fields in the Codex.
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Post Author
A list of all blog authors you can select from to attribute as the
post author. This section only shows if you have multiple users
with authoring rights in your blog.
Post Revisions
This module lists versions of your post that have been saved in
the database. You can click the radio buttons to choose previous
versions of the post to compare the edits that have been made.
Once viewing a comparison, you will have the option of changing
versions using a dropdown menu, or reverting to a previous
version of the post.
Publish
The Publish module contains a variety of functionality related to
the status of your post in addition to containing the buttons you will use to Save and Publish your
work.
Publish Status
This element identifies the current state of your post. New posts are Unpublished until they are Saved,
Submitted for Review, Scheduled or Published.
Visibility
This element identifies who can see your post. The default state is Public, meaning the post can be
seen by anyone. You can change the visibility of this post by clicking the Edit link to the right of the
current status. Select Public, Password‐protect, or Private using the radio buttons. Public posts may
also be declared “sticky.”
Public
Posts that are public may be seen by anyone who comes to your site. Normal posts are displayed in
reverse‐chronological order on your blog home page.
Public/Stick to Front Page
Checking this option will make the post “sticky,” meaning it will stay in the top position of your blog’s
home page until you come back and uncheck the box. This is generally used when there is an
important announcement you want to keep at the top of your home page even though you are
creating newer posts.
Password‐protect
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You can set a password for the post, so that anyone coming to your blog will see the post title, but not
the content of the post. Instead, they will see the message that the post is password‐protected and be
prompted to enter the password if they want to see the post. Be sure and write down the password
and keep it in a safe place.
Publish Date/Time
This element identifies the timestamp under which the post will be published. By default, posts are
published immediately when you click the Publish button, but you can also schedule a post to be
published in the future, or set the time back so that it appears to have been published in the past. Click
Edit next to where it says Publish immediately, and then enter the time and date you want to use in
the fields that appear. Click OK. If you have set a future publish date, the Publish button will change to
say Schedule, since you are not technically publishing the post yet. The post will publish automatically
when the defined date/time arrives.
Save button
Allows you to save your post as a draft rather than immediately publishing it.
Preview button
Allows you to see how your post will look in your blog template before officially publishing it.
Publish button
Publishes the post on your live site.
Other Ways to Create Posts
Press This
A Press This shortcut can be created by adding the Press This link to your favorites. You can grab the
Press This link from any of these three locations in the application: 1. The Press This module on the
New Post screen, 2. Tools → Tools in the main menu, or 3. Settings → Writing in the main menu.
By E‐mail
You can set up your blog to accept post by e‐mail. For information, see the section called “Post via e‐
mail” to learn more about Blog by E‐mail.
XML‐RPC and Atom Interface
You can post to your WordPress blog with tools like Windows Live Writer, Ecto, Bloggar, Radio
Userland (which means you can use Radio’s e‐mail‐to‐blog feature), NewzCrawler, and other tools that
support the Blogging APIs. You can read more about XML‐RPC support in the Codex.
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Managing Existing Posts
Managing Categories
Every Post in WordPress is filed under one or more Categories. Categories allow the classification of
your Posts into groups and subgroups, thereby aiding viewers in the navigation and use of your site.
Each Category may be assigned to a Category Parent so that you may set up a hierarchy within the
category structure. Using automobiles as an example, a hierarchy might be Cars‐>Ford‐>Mustang. In
creating categories, recognize that each category name must be unique, regardless of hierarchy. Use a
standard set of Categories to organize your content, similar to creating a table of contents to organize
chapters in a book. The default category is “uncategorized,” unless you change it in your Writing
Settings.
When using the WordPress Default Theme, Categories are shown in two different places on your blog.
First, the Categories are listed as links in the Category section of your sidebar, and second, all the
Categories to which a given post belongs are displayed under that post. When someone viewing your
blog clicks on one of those Category links, a archive page with all the Posts belonging to that Category
will be displayed.
To either add new categories or manage existing ones, go to Posts > Categories in the main menu. You
can add new categories using the simple form on the left side of the screen. You can edit or delete
categories using the table to the right. If you want to convert your categories into tags, use the
converter found in Tools > Import.
Managing Tags
Tags are the keywords you can assign to each post. Not to be confused with Categories, Tags have no
hierarchy, meaning there’s no relationship from one Tag to another. But like Categories, Tags provide
another means to aid your readers in accessing information on your blog. If categories act as your
blog’s table of contents, think of tags as the words that appear in your site’s index.
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When using the WordPress Default Theme, Tags are displayed under each Post those Tags are assigned
to. Someone viewing your blog can click on one of those Tag links, and an archive page with all the
Posts belonging to that Tag will be displayed.
To either add new tags or manage existing tags, go to Posts → Tags in the main menu. You can add
new tags using the simple form on the left side of the screen. You can edit or delete tags using the
table to the right. If you want to convert your tags into categories, use the converter found in Tools →
Import.
Media
In addition to uploading or embedding media into a blog post, you can also upload media files without
creating a post. This allows you to upload files to use later with posts and pages, to simply save media
files in a central location, and to get a web address for a particular file that you can link to from
elsewhere on the Web.
Uploading Media Files
Uploading media from your local computer into the Media Library is quite simple. Go to Media → Add
New in the main menu. The screen will appear relatively empty, since it basically just contains a button
to launch the media uploader. Two “uploaders”, Flash and Browser, are provided. If the Flash uploader
doesn’t work or you are on a slow connection, then click the “Browser Uploader” link to use the
Browser uploader.
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Flash Uploader
Your first prompt will be to choose files to upload. Select an individual file from the Select Files
window, then click the Open button. A “Crunching…” message will display, and when the uploading is
complete, the image and its related fields will be displayed. At that point you may edit and save the
information about that file.
Uploading multiple files at once: After clicking the Select Files button, in the Select Files window,
multiple files can be selected by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking on each file. After all the files
are selected, click on the Open button and all of those files will be uploaded.
If you click to Edit a media file, you will be able to edit the following fields:
Title
Enter the Title of this Media. The Title will be displayed in the File column of the Media Library.
Caption
The caption for this Media. For image type Media, the Caption is also used as alternate text for that
image.
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Description
A description for this particular Media.
Browser Uploader
Click the Browse button, find and click the file to upload from the File Upload window, then click the
Open button. The file name will be placed in the text box to the left of the Browse button. Once a file
name is displayed in the text box to the left of the Browse button, click the Upload button to upload
that file.
Media Library
All the files you’ve uploaded are listed in the Media Library, with the most recent uploads listed first. In
addition to text filters to display files by type (audio, images, etc.) there is a filter to display Unattached
files. This filter will display a list of files you have uploaded directly into the library without creating a
post.
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A table lists all of your media files in rows, and contains the following columns:
File
There is no column heading for “File”, but a thumbnail of the actual image or a thumbnail representing
the Media Type (audio, video, test, PDF, Doc) is displayed in this column.
Media
Media is the actual name of the file.
Description
The description of the Media you assigned at the time of upload.
Attached to
Attached to describes the post or page and the date of that post or page. Click on the title of the post
or page to edit that post or page.
Date
The date the file was uploaded.
Hovering the mouse cursor over a row reveals the action links under the Name column, in that row.
Clicking on a Media name will also initiate the Edit Action. The available Actions are:
Edit
Clicking Edit displays the screen to edit that individual file’s metadata.
Delete
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Clicking Delete will delete the file from the Media Library (as well as from any posts to which it is
currently attached).
View
Clicking View presents the file in your Theme.
Attach
The Attach link only appears for unattached files. Clicking Attach will launch a small popup that will
allow you to search for a post and attach the file to that post.
Pages
In WordPress, you can write either posts or pages. When you’re writing a regular blog entry, you write
a post. Posts automatically appear in reverse chronological order on your blog’s home page. Pages, on
the other hand, are for content such as “About Me,” “Contact Me,” etc. Pages live outside of the
normal blog chronology, and are often used to present information about yourself or your site that is
somehow timeless ‐‐ information that is always applicable. You can use Pages to organize and manage
any amount of content.
In general, Pages are very similar to Posts in that they both have Titles and Content and can use your
site’s Templates to maintain a consistent look throughout your site. Pages, though, have several key
distinctions that make them quite different from Posts.
• Pages are for content that you want to be available all the time and navigable from
anywhere on your site. Pages are not Posts, and do not cycle through your blog’s main
page.
• Pages can be organized into Pages and Subpages by selecting Page Parent when you create
a Page.
• Pages can use Page Templates that you can design to be the same or different from your
regular blog post pages. Page templates can include Template Files, Template Tags and
other PHP code.
• Pages cannot be associated with Categories and cannot be assigned Tags. The
organizational structure for Pages comes only from their hierarchical interrelationships,
and not from Tags or Categories.
• Pages are not files. They are stored in your database just like Posts are.
Creating Pages
To create a new Page, go to Pages → Add New from the main menu. You will see an editor similar to
the screen you use to create posts. Enter a title, text, add media and click Publish to create a simple
page.
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Page Order
If you have more than one page, you will see a module labeled
Page Order. You can select a numerical order for your Page to
determine the order in which Pages are listed in your navigation
or sidebar widget. By default, Pages will be listed in the order
they were created.
Page Parent
Just as you can have Subcategories within your Categories, you
can also nest Subpages beneath your Pages, creating a hierarchy
of pages. To nest a Page under an existing Page, create a new
Page or go to an existing Page in the Administration Panel, and
click the “Page Parent” drop‐down menu. The drop‐down menu
contains a list of all the Pages already created for your site. To
turn your current Page into a Subpage, or a “Child” of the
“Parent” Page, select the appropriate Page from the drop‐down
menu. If you specify a Parent other than “Main Page (no parent)”
from the list, the Page you are now editing will be made a Child of that selected Page. When your
Pages are listed, the Child Page will be nested under the Parent Page. The Permalinks of your Pages
will also reflect this Page hierarchy.
Page Templates
WordPress can be configured to use different Page Templates for different Pages. In the Page
Template module of the Page creation/editing screen, there is a drop‐down menu that allows you to
select which Template will be used when displaying this particular Page. NOTE: In order to access the
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Page Template selector, there must be at least one custom Page Template available in the active
theme (see Creating your Own Page Templates in the Codex to learn how to create one).
Changing the URL (or “Slug”) of Your Pages
If you have Permalinks enabled, and you have selected the Day and Name option (Click the Settings
tab, and then click the Permalinks subtab), then the permalink automatically shows up below your
post title when you start typing in the body of your post (not just the title).
However, if you have a different permalink option selected, or if you don’t have permalinks enabled at
all, you must do the following to edit your page URL:
• Create a Page by going to Pages → Add New and entering a title, text content, etc.
• Click the Publish button to publish your page.
• Go to Pages → Edit.
• Find your Page in the table, and click on the title to edit the Page.
• See the permalink under the title, and click the Edit link to change it.
Thus, if you don’t have the right permalink option enabled, you have to publish your pages before you
can set the URLs.
Listing Your Pages on Your Site
WordPress is able to automatically generate a list of Pages on your site, which could be displayed in a
number of ways, depending on your Theme. If you are using a Theme that uses navigation tabs, your
Pages will create tabs according to the Theme design. If you are using a Theme with a sidebar (such as
the default Theme), you can use the Pages widget to generate the Page list in your sidebar. Go to
Appearance → Widgets, click Add next to the Pages widget in the left column.
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Managing Existing Pages
The Edit Pages screens provides allows you to manage all the Pages in your blog. Pages can be edited,
deleted, and viewed. Filtering and searching make it easy to quickly find Pages matching certain
criteria if you have a large number of Pages. Go to Pages → Edit to access these editing features.
Several powerful features allow Pages to be edited in bulk allowing fields such as Author, Parent,
Template, Comments Allowed, Status, and Pings Allowed to be changed for a whole batch of Pages. In
addition, the Quick Edit feature provides an easy method to change a multitude of values, such as
Title, Slug, Date, and Author for a given Page.
Text Filters
At the top of this screen are links such as All, Published, Pending Review, Draft, Private, that when
clicked, will cause just the Pages of that type to be displayed in the underlying Table.
Search
Above the Table, to the right, is a search box where you can enter a word, or series of words, and click
the “Search Pages” button to search and display all the Pages meeting your search words.
A table lists all of your Pages in rows.
A table lists all of your Pages in rows. The Pages are listed with the newest Page first. The table
contains the following columns:
[ ]
This checkbox, when clicked (checked), “selects” that particular Page to be processed by a Bulk Action.
Title
This is the Page’s Title displayed as a link. Click the Title link to allow this Page to be edited in the Pages
Edit SubPanel. Next to the Title, if a Page is of a Draft, Pending, or Password Protected nature, text will
display showing that.
"ID"
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This is not a column in the Table, but by hovering the mouse over the Page Title, the Page ID is
revealed as part of the URL displayed in the browser status bar (in Firefox the status bar is displayed at
the bottom of the screen). A Page’s ID number is the unique number WordPress’ database uses to
identify individual Pages.
Author
Displayed in the form of a link, this is the author who wrote the Page. Clicking the author link causes all
the Pages authored by that user to be displayed in the Table of Pages (thus allowing a Bulk Action to
be applied to all Pages for a given author).
Comment bubble
A comment bubble is the column heading, and each Page row has comment bubble with the number
of comments for that Page. If a Pages has any comments, then the number comments is displayed in a
blue bubble. Clicking on a blue comment bubble causes the Comments Edit Comments SubPanel to be
displayed to allow moderation of those comments.
Date
The Date column for each Page shows the Date “Published” for Published Pages and the Date “Last
Modified” for Unpublished Pages.
Bulk Actions
This screen allows Bulk Actions to be performed on one or more Pages selected in the Table. For Bulk
Actions to be performed on multiple Pages at once, those Pages must be first selected using the
checkboxes in the left column of the table. Select Edit or Delete from the Actions menu and click
Apply.
If you are using the Bulk Edit feature, a layer will appear that lists the pages you’ve indicated along
with the metadata that can be applied to selected pages. Bulk Edit allows Author, Parent, Template,
Comments Allowed, Status, and Pings Allowed to be changed for all of the selected Pages. Click Cancel
to cancel and abort the Bulk Edit of these Pages. Click Update Page to save the Bulk Edits made to
these Pages.
Page row hovers
Hovering the mouse cursor over the Page row reveals the Edit, Quick Edit, Delete, and View (or
Preview, for unpublished pages) action links under the Title column, in that Page’s row.
Edit
Click on the Edit link or on the Page title to load the page editor for that particular Page.
Quick Edit
Quick Edit allows inline editing of fields related to a specific Page, including Title, Slug, Date, Author,
Password or Private page box, Parent, Order, Template, Allow Comments, Allow Pings, and Status.
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Delete
Clicking Delete deletes the Page.
View
Clicking View presents the Page as it appears in a single Page view on your blog. If the page is not yet
published, this link is replaced by Preview.
Links
WordPress allows you to creates list of hyperlinks (sometimes known as a blogroll) to appear in your
blog sidebar. You can create one list or many lists by using link categories to create specific link sets. By
default, a sample link to the wordpress.org site is included in your WordPress installation to give an
example of the kinds of information that might be entered when you create a new link. In the
administration panel the Links section of the main menu contains three screens: Edit, Add New, and
Link Categories.
Adding New Links
To create a list of links, each one must be added individually. To add a new link, go to Links → Add New
from the main menu. The Add New Link screen, like the Add New Post and Add New Page screens,
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contains fields for entering information, and allows you to customize the screen based on the
elements you find useful. The first three fields are the essential ones when creating new links, and are
not able to hidden using Screen Options.
Name
The name of the link is what is actually displayed on your site.
Web Address
This is where the link points. Sometimes called a URL, this is the destination, or the site, you want to go
to when you click the link. By default, the value of http:// is placed in the field to start you off.
Description
You may optionally enter a description of your link here. How the description is displayed on your site
depends on which theme you use. The default Kubrick Theme displays the description directly below
the name of the link on your site, and the classic theme displays the description to the right of the
name.
The modules for Categories, Target, Link Relationship (XFN), and Advanced, can be expanded or
collapsed by clicking on the module title bar, can be moved using drag and drop, and/or can be hidden
using the Screen Options tab. The fields in these modules are not required to create a new link, but
can provide additional information and functionality.
Categories
Categories are displayed in a module box that allows selection of one or more Link Categories in which
to associate a link. New Categories can also be added by simply typing that Category in the box and
clicking the Add button.
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Note
Link Categories are completely separate from the Categories you use for posts.
Target
This modules houses radio buttons that allow you to decide how the link’s destination is displayed
when someone clicks the link. Note: Specifying anything but none will cause validation problems on
your page. In this specific case, however, these validation problems will not cause problems for your
viewers’ web browsers.
_blank
The destination will open in a new window.
_top
If your site uses frames, this option could be handy. The destination will open in the current web
browser window instead of the current web page frame. Don’t bother with this option if you don’t use
frames, or if you don’t know what frames are; neither the default Kubrick nor the classic theme use
frames.
none
The default option. This will open the destination in the current window (or the current frame if your
site uses frames).
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Link Relationship (XFN)
XFN stands for XHTML Friends Network. WordPress allows for the generation of XFN attributes
automatically so you can show how you are related to the authors/owners of site to which you are
linking. XFN tags are an effort to add meaning to the connections (links) on the world wide web, and
are gaining in popularity. See XFN Relationship Definitions for a list of available relationships.
When you add a new link you may specify in this section of the SubPanel the relationship you share in
real life with the author of the page to which you’re linking. This will automatically add a rel="X"
attribute to the HTML code for the link (where X is the relationship you specify).
XFN relationships are optional for WordPress links. You can leave everything in this section blank and
all your links will still work.
Advanced
The following controls allow more advanced manipulation of your links.
Image URL
You can specify a URL of an image to associate with the link. What WordPress does with an image
depends on settings defined by the link’s category (see Manage Categories SubPanel).
RSS URL
RSS is a form of Syndication. If you are linking to a site with an RSS feed, you can enter the feed URL
here. Again, what WordPress does with this depends on your theme’s template files. Currently, neither
the Kubrick Theme nor the classic theme displays the RSS URL.
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Notes
Notes to yourself concerning the link.
Rating
You may chose to rate a link from 0 to 9, where 0 implies that the link is unrated. What the rating
system actually defines on your site is up to you to decide.
Save
Click the Add Link button to ensure you saved your Link to the database. Once you click the button, a
confirmation text box will appear at the top of the page telling you “Link Address”.
Keep this link private
Click this checkbox to keep the Link private. This will make the link not visible when Links (Blogrolls)
are displayed on your site.
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Managing Existing Links
The Edit Links screen allows you to manage the various links previously added to your blog. Individual
links can be accessed to edit the information about that particular link. Search and filtering ability is
also provided to allow you to find desired Links. Above the table in the upper right is a search box
where you can enter a word, or series of words, and click the “Search Links” button to search and
display all the links that include your search words. You can use the dropdown menus at the top of the
table to show only links in a particular category or to change the sort order of the table. Multiple links
can be selected for deletion.
Links are displayed on this screen as rows in a table with the following columns. You can choose to
hide any of these columns by accessing the Screen Options tab in the upper right and unchecking any
column you don’t wish to see.
Name
The name (in bold) of the link and its description.
URL
The destination URL (Web Address) of the link.
Category
All links must belong to one link category. The category to which that link is assigned is shown here.
rel
This column displays all of the XFN relationships for this link.
Visible
Whether or not the link is visible on your site.
Hovering over a row will display the actions you can perform on this link. You can edit any of the
properties of a specific link, or you can delete it. Mass actions such as mass deletion are performed by
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checking the boxes next to the items you wish to delete, choosing from the Actions menu and clicking
Apply.
Link Categories
Each Link in WordPress is filed under one or more Link Categories. This aids in navigation and allows
Links to be grouped with others of similar content. In creating Link Categories, recognize that each Link
Category name must be unique, and that Link Categories are separate from the Categories used on
your posts. If you are using the WordPress Default Theme (one of the two themes delivered with
WordPress), Links are shown, grouped by Link Category, in the sidebar. This screen allows you to
create new Link Categories, and edit or delete existing ones.
Adding a New Link Category
On the left side of the screen is the Add Category form, which allows you to create a new Link
Category. There are three pieces of information associated with each new Link Category: the name,
the slug, and the description.
Category name
This is the name that will be displayed in the sidebar above the links within this link category. To
reiterate, the Link Category name must be unique.
Category slug
The slug is the segment of the URL that will define this Link Category. This is the equivalent of editing a
permalink on a post. Again, the Category slug must be unique.
Description
Category descriptions are optional. Some themes take advantage of Link Category descriptions while
others do not, so having descriptions may change the way Link Categories are displayed for your site.
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Even if Link Categories are not used by your site’s theme, you may still find them useful from an
administration point of view.
Add Category
This is the most important part of the Add Category process. Once you’ve entered in all the
information about your new Link Category, use this button to save it. The new link category will appear
in the table to the right.
Managing Existing Link Categories
On the right hand side of the screen is a table that lists all of your Link Categories by row. Link
Categories are displayed alphabetically. The table of Link Categories contains the following columns:
Name
The name of the Link Category. Remember, each name must be unique. Click on the Name to edit the
Link Category.
Description
Link Categories may have an optional description.
Link
The number of Links which are members of the Link Category. Click on the number in the Links column
to be directed to the Edit Links SubPanel to manage the Links in that Category.
Slug
Shows the custom slug if you have entered one.
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The Screen Options tab allows you to choose which columns are displayed, or not displayed, in the
underlying table. Clicking on the Screen Options tab shows a list of the columns with a check‐box next
to each column. Check the box for each column you want displayed in the Table, or uncheck the box to
not display that column. Click the Screen Options tab again to close the Screen Options.
Hovering the mouse cursor over the Link Category row reveals the Edit, Quick Edit, and Delete action
links under the Name column in that Link Category row. Clicking on a Link Category Name will also
initiate the Edit Action. The available Actions are described are:
Edit
Clicking Edit displays the Edit Link Category screen to edit individual Link Category fields. This action
can also be initiated by clicking on the Link Category name. The editing screen will allow you to edit the
name, the slug, and the description.
Quick Edit
Clicking on Quick Edit will reveal a layer that allow inline editing of fields currently displayed in the
table for that Link Category. Click save to submit changes, or cancel to discard changes and close the
editing layer.
Delete
This Action deletes the Link Categories files. Delete is available only as a Bulk Action.
Note
Deleting a category does not delete the links in that category, but the links that were only assigned to
the deleted Category are set to the Default Link Category as defined in the Settings Writing SubPanel.
You can also use the checkboxes in the far left table column to select multiple link categories for
deletion. Check the boxes of the categories you wish to delete, select Delete from the Actions menu at
the top of the column, and click Apply.
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Chapter 6: Comments and Pings
Managing your comments and pings requires the use of two screens. Going to Comments in the main
menu provides you access to all comments that have been left on your site. Here you can
approve/unapprove, edit, mark as spam or delete individual comments, search for specific comments,
view all comments by a single author/IP or all comments on a specific post, filter by status, or perform
bulk actions such as bulk deletion or marking as spam. The other screen is your Discussion Settings
screen. You’ll have set your basic discussion settings when you set up your blog, but as time goes by
you may decide to change your settings. This is especially common if your blog starts to attract
spammers or people who leave unproductive comments, leading many bloggers to turn on various
moderation options for comments. You can add or edit these moderation rules at any time by going to
Settings → Discussion in the main menu. This screen also allows you to determine the rules for the
display of comments on your blog, including comment threading and paging, new features in
WordPress 2.7 that can be helpful when you receive a large number of comments.
Comments, Pingbacks and Trackbacks: Terminology
The Comments screen is actually the home of comments, pingbacks and trackbacks, but since they are
all ways in which people comment on your content, they are grouped together for management
purposes on the Comments screen. A Comment is something someone leaves on your actual site by
entering text in the comment form that appears with your posts and pages. Pingbacks and Trackbacks
are comments that people make about your content, but that they post on their own blogs instead of
leaving a comment on yours. Pingbacks and Trackbacks are similar in intent, but differ in technical
execution. For the sake of simplicity, WordPress refers to “Pings” as including both Pingbacks and
Trackbacks.
Using the Comments Screen
On the Comments screen in the administration panel, a table displays the twenty most recent
comments and pings. If you have more than twenty, pagination appears at the top and bottom of the
comments table. Most recent comments are shown on page 1, with subsequent pages showing older
comments. As you moderate comments, if you delete any or mark any as spam, new comments will
appear on page 1, so that there are always 20 comments showing. By default, this table shows the
“All” view, which includes comments of all states and types. If you prefer to see only certain states
(such as pending moderation) or types (such as only showing pings, not comments that have been left
on your actual site), you can use the filters at the top of the screen. If you have turned on comment
moderation, pending comments (those that are awaiting moderation) will be highlighted in yellow.
The comments table includes a significant amount of information. In the left column, the author’s
avatar, name, URI, e‐mail address and IP address are shown for Comments. Clicking on the IP link will
show you all comments left from that IP address. Clicking the e‐mail will launch your e‐mail program
with a message to that person. Clicking the URI will open that web site. For Pings, the left column
shows the name of the blog and post title, and the blog URI.
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The right column shows to which blog post or page the comment was submitted. The post title links to
that post within the administration tool for easy editing of the post. The number of comments
displayed after the post title links to filter the comments screen to list only comments on that post.
The # links to the live post’s permanent URI.
In the middle column, the comment text is displayed (for pings, an excerpt is shown). Above each
comment is the date and time it was submitted, which provides a permalink to the comment on your
blog. Hovering over a comment row will cause a set of action links to display below the comment text.
These links are:
Approve
If moderation is turned on, comments that are pending your approval to be displayed on your site will
show this link. Clicking Approve will make the comment appear on your site.
Unapprove
If you do not use moderation, if you have settings that pre‐approve certain comments, or if you have
already approved a comment, this link will show. Clicking Unapprove will reverse the approval and
change the comment’s state to Pending. The yellow background of pending comments will appear.
Edit
Clicking Edit will take you to the editing screen for that comment, where you can edit the comment
text, author name, URI, e‐mail address or status of the comment. Click Save to confirm your changes
and return to the comments table. You should see your changes reflected in the table.
Quick Edit
Clicking Quick Edit will reveal a layer that allows for inline editing of visible table fields. Click Save to
confirm changes, or Cancel to close the layer without committing any changes.
Mark as Spam
Marking a comment as spam will remove it from the default table view. These comments may be
accessed by clicking the Spam text link at the top of the screen. If you are running Akismet, be cautious
when marking something as spam, as it will be reported and used in determining the status of future
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incoming comments. If you just think a comment is uninteresting or not worth displaying, use Delete
instead.
Delete
This link is red for good reason. If you delete a comment, in cannot be retrieved. If you don’t want it to
display but don’t want it to appear on your site, you can use Unapprove instead.
Reply
Reply allows you to reply to a comment right from your administration panel. Clicking Reply will reveal
a layer in which you can enter your response to the comment. Click Save to submit the reply, or Cancel
to discard it and close the layer. Your replies will be automatically approved, so make sure you
approved the comment you are replying to, or your readers might be confused. Your reply will appear
in the space where you typed it at first, though once you’ve done anything else on the comments
screen, your reply will move to its chronological place in the comments list. If you have enabled
comment threading on your site, your reply will appear as a threaded response to the original
comment.
In addition to using the action links on individual comments, some actions may be performed in bulk.
To the left of each comment is a checkbox, which may be used for bulk actions. Simply click the
checkboxes next to the posts in question, then select Mark as Spam or Delete from the Actions menu
above the column of checkboxes. Click Apply, and all the items you checked will be removed as
directed. Checkboxes at the top and bottom of the column act as a toggle to select all/unselect all, or if
you have already selected some items will select the inverse.
Yet another option for acting on comments is the use of keyboard shortcuts. To use this option you
must have enabled it in your profile (just check the box to allow keyboard shortcuts). Once enabled,
you can use the J and K keys to move up and down the comments list to highlight a comment for
moderation, and use other keys to perform the actions. The keys for actions are easy to remember.
A
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Approve
U
Unapprove
E
Edit
Q
Quick Edit
S
Mark as Spam
D
Delete
R
Reply
Searching Comments
You can also search for specific comments by using the search function in the upper right. This
searches the text, author name, author e‐mail, author URI, and author IP address of all comments.
Clearing the search box and then clicking the search button will reset the display and show all
comments. The ability to search for comments can be useful for cases such as wanting to find all
previous comments by an author to see what they have said on your site before.
Comment Moderation
Comment moderation is a feature in WordPress that allows you to prevent comments from appearing
on your site without your express approval. Moderation can be very useful in addressing Comment
Spam, but it has more general applications as well. If you have turned on comment moderation, then
you will be notified of any comments that are left on your blog. Depending on which settings you’ve
enabled, you may need to explicitly approve each comment before it goes live, or you may only need
to approve comments by people who have not left approved comments on your blog before.
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WordPress runs a number of tests on each new comment before posting it to your blog. If a comment
fails one of these tests, it is not displayed immediately on the site but is placed in a queue for
moderation, the process of manual approval or deletion by the blog’s administrator. You can control
which comments get held for moderation on your Discussion Settings screen, which is accessible at
Settings → Discussion.
If you would like every comment to be held for moderation, check “An administrator must approve the
comment,” listed under the section called “Before a comment appears”.
If you would like to send suspicious comments to the moderation queue, while letting innocent
comments through, you will need to specify a set of rules for determining which comments are
suspicious.
The first option is to hold comments for moderation if they contain an unusually large number of
hyperlinks. Most normal comments contain at most one or two links while spam comments often have
a large number. Look at your own comments and set this to a value that makes sense for your
audience. If you do not wish any links to appear in comments, set it to 1. Many people set it to 2 to
allow commenters to provide helpful links in their comments while weeding out mass‐link comment
spam.
The second option is to specify a set of moderation keys which, if present in any part of the comment,
will cause it to be held for moderation. These keys are specified one per line in the large text area,
which is blank by default. Moderation keys can include common spam words, swear words, IP
addresses, and Regular Expressions (names, phrases, etc.).
When you add a new moderation key, it’s a good idea to test its validity by checking previous
comments. Simply use the link entitled “Check past comments against moderation list,” which is
located underneath the text box containing moderation keys. This asks WordPress to check previous
comments and tell you which ones would be flagged for moderation under your new set of keys.
The box marked Comment blacklist works in exactly the same way as the comment moderation box,
except that comments that match these words will be deleted immediately and without notification.
So be careful! Genuine comments could be deleted without you ever knowing they were there.
Adding moderation keys or blacklist keys can help reduce the amount of spam comments you get, but
be careful! If you include words that someone uses legitimately, the comments will be held or deleted.
For example, you may have entered “viagra” as a key, assuming only spammers would include that
word in comments. However, a friend or regular reader may use the word innocently in the context of
responding to a post you’ve made or making a joke. Comments can also be held or deleted because
part of a word matches. For example, if you’ve entered a the word “xnsd” because it is a spam word,
swear word, or the name of an annoying commenter (yes, this is a fake word; no one can be offended
by fake profanity), you’ll be protected from comments that include “xnsd” in the author name or
comment body. However, if someone includes “aklxnsdhw,” which is not a word that should be
screened, their comment will be held or deleted because it contains the objectionable string “xnsd”
even though it is not objectionable in this other word. Because of this, it’s a good idea not to use
regular expressions in the blacklist (as opposed to the moderation list) unless you are very sure that
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there is no possible way it could prevent legitimate comments from being shown. Once a comment has
been deleted, it cannot be retrieved.
Comment Spam
If you’ve been on the internet for any amount of time you’re probably familiar with “spam” in your e‐
mail inbox. For the uninitiated, spam is an unsolicited commercial message, or something you didn’t
ask for trying to sell you something. So what does this have to do with blogs? Just as you can get spam
messages in your inbox, people will leave spam comments on your blog. However, unlike e‐mail spam
where the target is you, comment spam generally targets search engines.
Why on earth would a spammer target a search engine on your blog? Let’s start from the beginning.
Several years ago Google pioneered a search technique called PageRank. In addition to looking at the
content of a page, PageRank also looks at who links to a page and what that link says. This technology
is what made Google very good at returning relevant results and made it the most popular search
engine today. Because their ranking system relies so heavily on PageRank people can sometimes game
the system in what’s called “Google Bombing.” A Google bomb is when a large number of different
websites link to a page with the same link text to influence the ranking of that page for a search term.
This brings us back to the spammers. A spammer might have a site that sells viagra and wants to be at
the top of a search for viagra on Google, so to create the effect of a Google bomb they leave
comments on hundreds or thousands of weblogs linking to their site with the link text “viagra”. They
don’t really care if you see it, in fact they’d rather you didn’t because you would delete it, they just
want the search engine to see it when they index your page.
Fighting Comment Spam
Comment Moderation is very effective in addressing unwanted comments. The best defense against
comment spam is just watching your comments. Selecting Comments from the main menu will take
you to a screen that shows a listing of the latest comments on any post and you can quickly scan the
comment activity on your site. The faster you respond to comment spam on your site, the less likely
the spammers will return. The Akismet plugin that is bundled with the WordPress install, is highly
effective at combating comment spam because it taps into a wide community of bloggers reporting
comment spammers. If you decide to activate Akismet, please be sure that when you click “Mark as
Spam” on an incoming comment you truly believe it is spam. If it’s just uninteresting or you dislike
what the author had to say, click Delete instead, so that the author isn’t marked as a spammer in the
Akismet system.
Stealth Spam
A new technique is the spammers will leave a perfectly normal‐looking comment except for the
commenter’s URI or name. The best way to watch out for this is to visit the URIs of people who leave
comments on your blog. (This is a good practice anyway.) If one looks suspicious, either delete the
comment entirely or leave the comment and delete the URI. Another “stealth spam” tactic is to use a
div‐tag around a bundle of hundreds of links. This becomes more and more common because many
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types of software display the given HTML tags directly and not the HTML code. To avoid this the
software must strip out the HTML tags while inserting the comment into the database.
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Chapter 7: Design and Layout
About Themes
WordPress Themes use a combination of template files, template tags, and CSS style sheets to
generate the visual structure and design of your site.
Template Files
Template files are the building blocks which come together to create your site. In the WordPress
Theme structure, the header, sidebar, content, and footer are all contained within individual files. They
join together to create your page. This allows you to customize the building blocks. For example, in the
Default WordPress Theme, the multi‐post view found on the front page, category, archives, and search
web pages on your site, the sidebar is present. Click on any post, you will be taken to the single post
view and the sidebar will now be gone. You can choose which parts and pieces appear on your page,
and customize them individually, allowing for a different header or sidebar to appear on all pages
within a specific category. And more. For a more extensive introduction to Templates, see Stepping
Into Templates.
Template Tags
Template tags are the bits of code which provide instructions and requests for information stored
within the WordPress database. Some of these are highly configurable, allowing you to customize the
date, time, lists, and other elements displayed on your website. You can learn more about template
tags in Stepping Into Template Tags.
CSS Style Sheets
This is where it all comes together. On every template file within your site, there are XHTML tags and
CSS references wrapped around your template tags and content. In the style sheet within each Theme
are commands for the page’s structure. Without these instructions, your page would simply look like a
long typed page. With these instructions, you can move the building block structures around, making
your header very long and filled with graphics or photographs, or simple and narrow. Your site can
“float” in the middle of the viewer’s screen with space on the left and right, or stretch across the
screen, filling the whole page. Your sidebar can be on the right or left, or even start midway down the
page. How you style your page is up to you. But the instructions for styling are found in the style.css
file within each Theme folder.
Selecting the Active Theme
WordPress supplies two default themes (Kubrick and Classic) for your initial use. You can switch
between these two themes, customize them, add a new theme, or create your own. Themes are
accessed through Appearance → Themes, which takes you to a screen that shows you the currently
active theme at the top, and other available themes below. From the Available Themes section, click
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on theme title (or theme screenshot) for the theme you wish to activate. A preview of the theme will
be shown; to activate the theme, click the “Activate [Theme Name]” link in the top right. Your
selection should immediately become active.
Custom Headers
Some themes include the option to adjust the header colors or background image. For example,
Kubrick allows you to select colors for the header. If you have a theme activated that has this
functionality, a submenu item will appear in the Appearance menu that gives you access to this level of
customization. In the case of Kubrick, clicking this submenu item will take you to a screen where you
can choose the colors of the background header gradient as well as the font colors. If the color selector
has been opened, close it to access advanced options for the theme header. Some themes also will
allow you to upload images for use in a custom header. If you are using a theme that does not include
the option to customize your header, that submenu item will not be displayed in the Appearance
menu.
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Uploading a New Theme
There are many themes available for download that will work with your WordPress installation. You
can browse available themes at the official WordPress Theme Repository. Themes in the repository
have been checked and inspected, and are free for downloading. The site features the ability to search
by type and style, and offers a demonstration of the page view elements of the Theme. Alternately,
you can search for themes elsewhere using a search a search engine. When downloading a theme
from an unofficial source, it’s a good idea to do a search on that theme to see what community
members have said about it. You’ll want to be careful and stick with themes and theme authors that
have a good online reputation, or you might unwittingly wind up downloading spyware or spam onto
your blog. That said, there are far more awesome themes out there than malicious ones, so do look
around to find a theme that you love.
Once you’ve found the theme you want to use, you can install it via the WordPress admin area,
through FTP or cPanel. If the theme that you are installing provides instructions, be sure to read
through and follow those instructions for the successful installation of the theme. It is recommended
that theme developers provide installation instructions for their own themes, because themes can
provide special optional functionality that may require more steps than the basic installation steps
covered here. If your theme does not work after following any provided instructions, please contact
the theme author for help.
Adding Themes via the WordPress Interface
Select Appearance/Add New Theme
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Search for a theme using the available search features
Click “Install” and then at the next screen click “Install Now”
To use the theme on your site, click Activate.
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Adding Themes via FTP
To add a new theme to your WordPress installation via FTP, follow these basic steps:
1. Download the theme archive and extract the files it contains. You may need to preserve
the directory structure in the archive when extracting these files. Follow the guidelines
provided by your theme author.
2. Using an FTP client to access your host web server, create a directory to contain your
theme in the wp‐content/themes directory provided by WordPress. For example, a theme
named Test should be in wp‐content/themes/test. Your theme may provide this directory
as part of the archive.
3. Upload the theme files to the new directory on your host server.
4. Follow the instructions above for activating the new theme.
Adding New Themes in cPanel
If your host offers the cPanel control panel, and the theme files are in a .zip or .gz archive follow these
instructions:
Note
This assumes the theme you download is a compressed (.zip) file and the files in the .zip file are in their
“named” folder.
1. Download the theme .zip file to your local machine.
2. In cPanel File Manager, navigate to your themes folder. If you have WordPress installed in
its own folder called WordPress, you would navigate to public_html/WordPress/wp‐
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content/themes and if WordPress is installed in your web‐root folder you would navigate
to public_html/wp‐content/themes.
3. Once you’ve navigated to the themes folder in cPanel File Manager, click on Upload file(s)
and upload that zip file you saved in Step 1.
4. Once the .zip file is uploaded, click on the .zip file name in cPanel, then in the panel to the
right, click on Extract File Contents, and that .zip file will be uncompressed.
5. Follow the instructions above for activating the new theme.
High Quality Installing a Theme Video: http://educhalk.org/blog/?p=91
Modifying Themes
Template files are the building blocks which come together to create your site. In the WordPress
Theme structure, the header, sidebar, content, and footer are all contained within individual files. They
join together to create your page. This allows you to customize the building blocks. For example, in the
Default WordPress Theme, the multi‐post view found on the front page, category, archives, and search
web pages on your site, the sidebar is present. Click on any post, you will be taken to the single post
view and the sidebar will now be gone. You can choose which parts and pieces appear on your page,
and customize them individually, allowing for a different header or sidebar to appear on all pages
within a specific category.
If you want to make changes to your theme, such as modifying the CSS to change the color scheme or
modifying the you can do so using the built‐in Theme Editor, accessible from the Appearance menu.
The editor allows you to edit the markup of the files listed to the left. Click on a file name to load it in
the editor. Save to have your changes applied to the theme. You will need to know how to write CSS,
HTML, and/or PHP to modify theme files. The following are the files typically included within a Theme.
• 404 Template = 404.php
• Archive Template = archive.php
• Archive Index Page = archives.php
• Comments Template = comments.php
• Footer Template = footer.php
• Header Template = header.php
• Links = links.php
• Main Template = index.php
• Page Template = page.php
• Popup Comments Template = comments‐popup.php
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• Post Template = single.php
• Search Form = searchform.php
• Search Template = search.php
• Sidebar Template = sidebar.php
• Stylesheet = style.css
For more information on using the Theme Editor, see the Codex.
CSS
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. It allows you to store style presentation information (like colors
and layout) separate from your HTML structure. This allows precision control of your website layout
and makes your pages faster and easier to update. On every template file within your site, there are
XHTML tags and CSS references wrapped around your template tags and content. In the style sheet
within each Theme are commands for the page’s structure. Without these instructions, your page
would simply look like a long typed page. With these instructions, you can move the building block
structures around, making your header very long and filled with graphics or photographs, or simple
and narrow. Your site can “float” in the middle of the viewer’s screen with space on the left and right,
or stretch across the screen, filling the whole page. Your sidebar can be on the right or left, or even
start midway down the page. How you style your page is up to you, and the instructions for styling are
found in the style.css file within each Theme folder.
Template Tags
Template tags are the bits of code which provide instructions and requests for information stored
within the WordPress database. Some of these are highly configurable, allowing you to customize the
date, time, lists, and other elements displayed on your website. If you are interested in using Template
Tags to change your site, please refer to the full list of Template Tags available in the Codex.
Creating Your Own Theme
If you want to create your own design from scratch and don’t want to work from an existing theme’s
code, you will need to create your own theme. You can find directions on how to do this in the Codex.
If you run into problems, try the support forums for advice and help. Do a search of the forums before
posting your question, as chances are someone else has had the same problem before.
When you have finished creating your theme, upload it, activate it, and enjoy the fruits of your labor.
Consider giving back to the WordPress community by releasing your theme as open source. The
universe will reward you with many karmic blessings.
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Sidebar Widgets
Themes usually have at least 1 or 2 sidebars. Sidebars are the narrow columns to the left or right of
your blog posts, or in some themes, they appear as rows below the main posts column. Each section in
the sidebar is known as a “Widget” that you can add or remove, move up or down in a sidebar, move
between sidebars (in themes that have more than one), and configure. To manage widgets, go to
Appearance → Widgets in the main menu. You should see two columns: Current Widgets and Available
Widgets.
Note
If your current active Theme is not widget‐compatible, meaning the theme is not coded for widgets,
you will see the message, “You are seeing this message because the theme you are currently using
isn’t widget‐aware, meaning that it has no sidebars that you are able to change. For information on
making your theme widget‐aware, please follow these instructions.”
Adding Widgets
Go to Appearance → Widgets. You will see two sections: Available Widgets and Current Widgets. In
the Current Widgets section, decide which sidebar you want to show/configure. Note: The default
Kubrick theme has just one sidebar defined. Other themes might have more than one sidebar defined,
and if so, you’ll be able to select it from the Current Widgets drop‐down menu. Each of the available
widgets is described below.
Find a widget you want to add from the list of Available Widgets. Click on “Add” to add the widget to
that sidebar, and click “Save Changes” to confirm the addition. Note that some widgets have default
configurations and will begin to work immediately, while others require configuration details to be
entered before they will display correctly on your blog. Also, some themes come with certain widgets
pre‐included in the theme. Once you add a new widget, the default widgets that had been showing
before may be gone. Don’t worry, you just need to re‐add them on the Widgets screen. The theme is
assuming that since you’ve started adding widgets yourself, you no longer want to use the defaults. If
you want to use the defaults in addition to new selections, just make a note of the default widgets and
add them again.
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Configuring Widgets
In the Current Widgets section, you can edit both the content of individual widgets and the order in
which they are displayed in your blog sidebars. To edit the details of a particular widget, such as the
title to display in the sidebar or the number of items to display, click the Edit link to reveal a
configuration view. Enter the new details, then click the Done button. Click the Save Changes button to
confirm the changes you’ve made. When you have more than one widget in your list of Current
Widgets, you can determine the order in which they will appear on you blog. Click on the widget title
and hold the left mouse button down, then drag the widget bar up or down to the location desired. At
that point release the mouse button. That process is called drag‐and‐drop. Click “Save Changes” to
confirm your new layout.
Removing a Widget
In the Current Widgets section, go to the sidebar that contains the widget you want to remove. Click
“Edit” next to that widget. The widget title will expand to the configuration view. Click “Remove” in the
lower right, then click “Save Changes” to confirm the deletion.
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Chapter 8: Plugins
About Plugins
The core of WordPress is designed to be lean, to maximize flexibility and minimize code bloat. Plugins
are like mini‐applications that hook into WordPress to extend its functionality by offering custom
functions and features. Plugins are developed separately from core by thousands of developers so that
each user can tailor their site to their specific needs. You can use plugins for a wide range of
functionality, including front‐end things like adding an event calendar or shopping cart to your blog, or
for back‐end things like changing the way the administration panel looks or how you manage tags.
Default Plugins
The following plugins are included with the WordPress core distribution:
Akismet
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.
You can review the spam it catches under “Manage” and it automatically deletes old spam after 15
days.
Hello Dolly
This is not just a plugin, it symbolizes the hope and enthusiasm of an entire generation summed up in
two words sung most famously by Louis Armstrong. Hello, Dolly. This is, by the way, the world’s first
official WordPress Plugin. When enabled you will randomly see a lyric from “Hello, Dolly” in the upper
right of your Administration Panel.
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Finding and Installing Plugins
Built‐In Plugin Browser
The official plugin repository at wordpress.org includes many thousands of plugins to choose from, and
has a rating system so you can see which plugins other users’ value the most. You can search for
plugins by keyword or author, or browse by tags. It’s recommended that plugin authors include
screenshots and a description of their plugins when submitting to the repository, but because plugins
are developed by so many different people, there will be varying amounts of information available for
each one.
Since WordPress 2.7, plugins in the official repository can now be browsed and installed from within
the administration panel. In the left‐hand menu, go to Plugins → Add New. You will be given the
option to search by keyword or browse the tag cloud of popular plugin tags. If you are not looking for a
specific plugin, try browsing by tag, as it tends to yield more results than keyword search in some
cases. For example, if you are looking for more features around commenting, such as the ability to
include video comments, you would click on the "comments" tag, which would lead you to a list of all
plugins tagged with the word comments.
After looking through the list and finding one that sounds good, just click on Install. Depending on your
server setup, the plugin with either automatically install, or you will be asked for your FTP information.
If you are asked for this information, simply fill in and submit the form, and then your selected plugin
will install itself.
Once the plugin has been installed, you will need to activate it. Go to Plugins → Installed and you will
see a list of active and inactive plugins. Find the plugin you just installed, and click on the Activate link
next to it. Voila! Your plugin is now activated.
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Other Ways to Find Plugins
In addition to the official repository that is accessible from your Administration Panel, plugins also can
be found at the WordPress Plugin Database at wp‐plugins.net. Not all WordPress Plugins make it into
these repositories. Try searching the web for “WordPress Plugin” and the keywords for the type of
functionality you are seeking. When obtaining plugins from a source other than the official repository,
you will need to download the plugin and then ftp it to your server according to the author’s
directions. Be safe! Before installing a plugin this way, check to see what people are saying online
about the plugin to make sure the plugin is legitimate and won’t do anything sneaky on your blog.
Compatibility Issues
Plugins are meant to play nice, not only with the core of WordPress, but with other plugins. Most of
the time, this is what happens, and users are able to install dozens of plugins (though the average is
five) without any compatibility issues. Sometimes, though, a plugin’s code will get in the way of
another plugin, causing compatibility issues. If your blog starts doing strange things, you may have
plugin compatibility issues. Try deactivating all your plugins and activating them in various
combinations until you find the culprit. If you find compatibility issues, please let the plugin authors
know about it.
Plugin Updates
Plugin authors will sometimes update their plugins to fix bugs, add functionality, or to be compatible
with a new version of WordPress (for example, a number of plugins needed to update their code to fit
into the new navigational structure of WordPress 2.8). Plugins that are in the official repository will let
you know when there is an update available. When you see a number appear next to Plugins in the
left‐hand menu, that means there are plugin updates available. Just follow the instructions and
updating your plugin will be as easy as installing it was.
Managing Your Plugins
If you wish to stop using a plugin, you have two choices. You can deactivate the plugin but keep it
installed, allowing you to reactivate it later should you decide you want to start using it again, or you
can uninstall the plugin and remove it from your system altogether. You can also activate currently
inactive plugins. For any of these functions, go to “Plugins > Installed”, and click the appropriate link.
Creating a Plugin
If there’s something you wish you could do with your blog and you can’t find a plugin that includes that
function, you might want to create one yourself. If you are proficient in PHP, you can learn about
creating plugins in the Codex. If you’d like to collaborate with other developers, consider joining the
wp‐hackers mailing list, or hop into the #WordPress‐dev IRC channel to find yourself some co‐
conspirators. If you are not a developer but wish someone else would make the plugin of your dreams,
try posting it in our support forums.
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Manually Installing a Plugin Video: http://educhalk.org/blog/?p=91
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Chapter 9: System Administration
While this handbook does not delve into the more complex back end processes that run your blog,
there are some system administration‐type tasks that you may need to tackle in the course of your
regular use.
Importing Files
If you are coming to WordPress from another blogging platform, you may wish to import posts from
your old blog. Instructions for most major platforms are now included in the WordPress Administration
Panel. Go to Tools → Import and select your previous platform from the list. You will be given
instructions on how to export your files from the old system, and will be able to import them into your
WordPress blog.
Exporting Files
Conversely, should you need to move your posts from one WordPress blog to another, or should you
decide to leave WordPress for another platform, you can export your files within the Administration
Panel as well. Go to Tools → Export and follow the directions there.
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File Permissions
On computer file systems, different files and directories have permissions that specify who and what
can read, write, modify and access them. This is important because WordPress may need access to
write to files in your wp‐content directory to enable certain functions.
All files should be owned by your user account on your web server, and should be writable by your
username. Any file that needs write access from WordPress should be group‐owned by the user
account used by the webserver. For example, you may have a user account that lets you FTP files back
and forth to your server, but your server itself may run using a separate user, in a separate usergroup,
such as dhapache or nobody.
The file and folder permissions of WordPress should be the same for most users, depending on the
type of installation you performed and the umask settings of your system environment at the time of
install.
Note
If you installed WordPress yourself, you likely do not need to modify file permissions. Unless you are
experiencing problems with permission errors, or you want to, you probably should not mess with this.
For core WordPress files, all should be writable only by your user account. However, if you utilize
mod_rewrite Permalinks or other .htaccess features you should make sure that WordPress can also
write to your .htaccess file.
If you want to use the built‐in theme editor, all files need to be group writable. Try using it before
modifying file permissions, it should work.
Some plugins require the /wp‐content folder be made writeable, but in such cases they will let you
know during installation. In some cases, this may require assigning 755 permissions or higher (e.g. 777
on some hosts). The same is true for /wp‐content/cache and maybe /wp‐content/uploads
Additional directories under /wp‐content should be documented by whatever plugin / theme requires
them. Permissions will vary.
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For more information on file permissions including directions for editing permissions using various
methods, see the Codex.
Backing Up Your Database and Files
Your WordPress database contains every post, every comment and every link you have on your blog. If
your database gets erased or corrupted, you stand to lose everything you have written. There are
many reasons why this could happen and not all are things you can control, which is why it is essential
to make regular backups of your data.
There are two parts to backing up your WordPress site: Database and Files. You need to back up the
entire site as well as your WordPress database. Your WordPress site consists of the following:
• WordPress Core Installation
• WordPress Plugins
• WordPress Themes
• Images and Files
• JavaScript, PHP, and other code/script files
• Additional Files and Static Web Pages
All of these are used in various combinations to generate your website. The database contains your
posts and a lot of data generated on your site, but it does not include the above elements that all
come together to create the look and information on your site. These need to be saved. Full
instructions for backing up your site and database are available in the Codex. If you have any questions
about the backup process or run into problems, support is provided online at the Support Forums to
help you through the process.
High Quality Video on Backing Up WordPress: http://educhalk.org/blog/?tag=move
Upgrading WordPress
In WordPress 2.8, a built‐in upgrade function makes it easier than ever to upgrade your WordPress
installation. Simply go to Tools > Upgrade in the main menu. You’ll be given the option to perform a
one‐click upgrade or download the files. If you choose to perform the one‐click upgrade, you will be
upgraded in mere moments. Some hosting setups do not support this function, so if you receive an
error rather than a notice that the upgrade is complete, check to see if your host is compatible with
the one‐click upgrade. A list of host compatibility has begun to be compiled in the Codex. If your host is
not compatible with the automatic upgrade, you can still upgrade the old way.
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Doing a Manual Upgrade
For these instructions, it is assumed that your blog’s URL is http://example.com/wordpress/. Note that
during the upgrade process access to your blog may not work for your visitors.
Warning
If you run into problems Upgrading WordPress with the three steps described here, you need to revert
to your old version first before using the more detailed upgrade instructions from the Codex (i.e.
restore the backup made in step 0). Even though you might not run into any errors with this process
right away, you might run into problems later down the line. Then it may not be possible to revert far
enough back to fix the problem without losing any recent changes. So, if you use Plugins and Themes
other than the ones that come with the default WordPress installation, it is advisable to start over with
the more detailed upgrade instructions.
Step 1: Prepare
• Just in case something goes wrong, make sure you have a backup.
• Make sure the database user name registered to WordPress has permission to create,
modify, and delete database tables. If you installed WordPress in the standard way, and
nothing has changed since then, you are fine.
• Deactivate your plugins. A plugin might not be compatible with the new version, so it’s
nice to check for new versions of them and deactivate any that may cause problems. You
can reactivate plugins one‐by‐one after the upgrade.
Step 2: Replace WordPress files
• Get the latest WordPress. Either download and extract it to your computer or download it
directly to the server.
• As a reminder, to extract a tar.gz to a folder use this command, replacing (folder name)
with the name of your folder: tar ‐xvzf latest.tar.gz ‐C ./(foldername)
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• Delete your old wp‐includes and wp‐admin directories.
• Copy the new WordPress files to your server, overwriting old files in the root, except
perhaps the wp‐content folder (see "NOTE" below). You may use FTP or shell commands
to do so. Note that this means all the files, including all the files in the root directory as
well. If you use the default or classic theme and have customized it, then you can skip that
theme.
Note
The wp‐content folder requires special handling, as do the plugins and themes folders. You should
copy over the contents of these folders, not the entire folder. In some cases, copying the entire folder
may overwrite all your customizations and added content.
Also take care to preserve the content of the wp‐config.php file in the root directory. This file contains
current settings for your existing installation, e.g. database sign‐in information. Occasionally new
versions of WordPress adds statements to this file. (E.g. in version 2.5 the SECRET_KEY variable was
added, see Extended upgrade instructions). Compare your existing file with the new installation file
which is named wp‐config‐sample.php . Either transfer your settings to the sample‐file and rename it
to wp‐config.php or copy the new statements from the sample file into your current file.
Step 3: Upgrade your installation
Visit your main WordPress admin page at /wp‐admin . You may be asked to login again. If a database
upgrade is necessary at this point, WordPress will detect it and give you a link to a URL like
http://example.com/wordpress/wp‐admin/upgrade.php. Follow that link and follow the instructions.
This will update your database to be compatible with the latest code. If you fail to do this step, your
blog might look funny. If you have caching enabled, your changes will appear to users more
immediately if you clear the cache at this point (and if you don’t, you may get confused when you see
the old version number in page footers when you check to see if the upgrade worked). Your WordPress
installation is successfully upgraded.
High Quality Upgrade Videos: http://educhalk.org/blog/?tag=upgrade
Moving WordPress
There are times when you need to move WordPress around within your server, and times when you
need to move WordPress from one server to another. You don’t need to reinstall. WordPress is flexible
enough to handle all of these situations. Easy answer for most installations:
• If database and URL remains the same, you can move by just copying your files and database.
• If database name or user changes, edit wp‐config.php to have the correct values.
• If you want to test before you switch, you must temporarily change siteurl and home in the
database table wp_options (through phpMyAdmin or similar).
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If you had any kind of rewrites (permalinks) setup you must disable .htaccess and reconfigure
permalinks when it goes live.
High Quality Moving WordPress Videos: http://educhalk.org/blog/?tag=move
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Chapter 10: Working with WordPress Templates
Stepping Into Templates
Template files are the building blocks of your WordPress site. They fit together like the pieces of a
puzzle to generate the web pages on your site. Some templates (the header and footer template files
for example) are used on all the web pages, while others are used only under specific conditions.
A traditional web page consists of two files:
• The XHTML page to hold the structure and content of the page and
• the CSS Style Sheet which holds the presentation styles of the page.
In WordPress, the (X)HTML structure and the CSS style sheet are present but the content is generated
"behind the scenes" by various template files. The template files and the style sheet are stored
together as a WordPress Theme. To learn more about creating Themes, read Theme Development.
The WordPress Page Structure
A simple WordPress web page structure is made up of three basic building "blocks": a header, the
content, and a footer. Each of these blocks is generated by a template file in your current WordPress
Theme.
• The header contains all the information that needs to be at the top — i.e. inside the <head>
tag — of your XHTML web page, such as the <doctype>, <meta> tags and links to style sheets.
It also includes the opening <body> tag and the visible header of your blog (which typically
includes the title of your site, and may also include navigation menus, a logo bar, the
description of your site, etc.).
• The content block contains the posts and pages of your blog, i.e. the "meat" of your site.
• The footer contains the information that goes at the bottom of your page, such as links to
other Pages or categories on your site in a navigation menu, copyright and contact
information, and other details.
Basic Template Files
To generate such a structure within a WordPress Theme, start with an index.php template file in your
Theme's directory. This file has two main functions:
• Include or "call" the other template files
• Include the WordPress Loop to gather information from the database (posts, pages,
categories, etc.)
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For our simple structure, we only need to include two other template files: the header and the footer.
These must be named header.php and footer.php. The Template Tags that include them look like this:
<?php get_header(); ?>
<?php get_footer(); ?>
In order to display the posts and pages of your blog (and to customize how they are being displayed),
your index.php file should run the WordPress Loop between the header and footer calls.
More Complex Page Structures
Many WordPress themes include one or several sidebars that contains navigation features and more
information about your website. The sidebar is generated by a template file called sidebar.php. It can
be included in your index.php template file with the following template tag:
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
Where's the Beef?
Notice that we have not included a template tag to "get" the content of our web page. That is because
the content is generated in the WordPress Loop, inside index.php.
Also note that the Theme's style sheet determines the look and placement of the header, footer,
sidebar, and content in the user's browser screen. For more information on styling your WordPress
Themes and web pages, see Blog Design and Layout.
Template Files Within Template Files
You have seen how WordPress includes standard template files (header, footer, and sidebar) within
the index.php template file. You can also include other template files within any of your template files.
For example, sidebar.php might contain a template file that generates a search form —
searchform.php. Because this is not one of WordPress's standard template files, the code to include it
is a little different:
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/searchform.php'); ?>
Instead of using a WordPress template tag to include the file, we'll use the PHP command include,
which needs to know where the file is located (TEMPLATEPATH is a special variable within WordPress
that points to the theme's template file directory).
Most WordPress Themes include a variety of template files within other templates to generate the
web pages on the site. The following template files are typical for the main template (index.php) of a
WordPress site:
• header.php
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o theloop.php (The Content)
o wp‐comments.php
• sidebar.php
o searchform.php
• footer.php
However, this structure can be changed. For instance, you could put the search form in your header.
Perhaps your design does not need a footer, so you could leave that template out entirely.
Special Template Files
WordPress features two core page views of web pages in a WordPress site. The single post view is
used when the web pages displays a single post. The multi‐post view lists multiple posts or post
summaries, and applies to category archives, date archives, author archives, and (usually) the "normal"
view of your blog's home page. You can use the index.php template file to generate all of these types
of pages or rely on WordPress' template hierarchy to choose different template files depending on the
situation.
The WordPress Template Hierarchy answers the following question:
• What template file will WordPress use when a certain type of page is displayed?
WordPress automatically recognizes template files with certain standard names and uses them for
certain types of web pages. For example, when a user clicks on the title of a blog post, WordPress
knows that they want to view just that article on its own web page. The WordPress template hierarchy
will use the single.php template file rather than index.php to generate the page — if your Theme has a
single.php file. Similarly, if the user clicks on a link for a particular category, WordPress will use the
category.php template if it exists; if it doesn't, it looks for archive.php, and if that template is also
missing, WordPress will go ahead and use the main index.php template. You can even make special
template files for specific categories (see Category Templates for more information).
Template File Tips
Tracking Opening and Closing Tags
Template files include the use of XHTML tags and CSS references. HTML elements and CSS references
can cross template files, beginning in one and ending in another. For example, the html and body
HTML elements typically begin in header.php and end in footer.php. Most WordPress themes make
use of HTML div elements, which can also span several files. For instance, the main div for the page
content might start in header.php and end in either index.php or single.php. Tracking down where an
HTML element begins and ends can get complicated if you are developing, designing, or modifying a
Theme. Use comments to note in the template files where a large container tag opens and where it
closes so you can track which div is which at the end of different sections.
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Test Template Files Under Different Views
If you have made changes to the comments, sidebar, search form, or any other template file, make
sure you test them using different web page views (single post, different types of archives, and pages).
Comment Deviations
If you are designing Themes for public release, keep in mind that someone who downloads your
Theme will probably want to modify it slightly for their own use. So, it is helpful if you make notes in
your template files where you have made changes from the logic of the Default and/or Classic Themes.
It is also a good idea to add comments in your Theme's main style file if you have style information
elsewhere (such as in your header.php file or in HTML tags).
Close the Tag Door Behind You
If you start a HTML tag or div in one template file, make sure you include the closing tag in another
template file. The WordPress Forum gets a lot of questions about "what happened to my theme" when
they remove the footer template file without closing the tags that began in the header template file.
Track down your tags and make sure they are closed. (A good way to verify that this is correct is to test
your single and archive page views with an HTML validator).
CSS Styles in Templates
You are free to use whatever HTML and CSS tags and styles you like in your templates. However, you
are encouraged to follow the standard WordPress theme structure (see Site Architecture 1.5). This will
make your Themes more understandable to your users.
Template Hierarchy
Introduction
WordPress Templates fit together like the pieces of a puzzle to generate the web pages on your
WordPress site. Some templates (the header and footer template files for example) are used on all the
web pages, while others are used only under specific conditions.
Since the introduction of Themes in WordPress v1.5, Templates have become more and more
configurable. In order to develop WP themes, a proper understanding of the way WordPress selects
template files to display the various pages on your blog is essential. If you seek to customize an
existing WordPress theme, this article aims to help you decide which template file needs editing.
Using Conditional Tags
WordPress provides more than one way to match templates to query types. WordPress Theme
developers can also use Conditional Tags to control which templates will be used to generate a certain
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page. Some WordPress Themes may not implement all template files described here. Some Themes
use conditional tags to load other template files.
The General Idea
WordPress uses the Query String — information contained within each link on your web site — to
decide which template or set of templates will be used to display the page.
First, WordPress matches every Query String to query types — i.e. it decides what type of page (a
search page, a category page, the home page etc.) is being requested.
Templates are then chosen — and web page content is generated — in the order suggested by the
WordPress Template hierarchy, depending upon what templates are available in a particular
WordPress Theme.
WordPress looks for template files with specific names in the current Theme's directory and uses the
first matching template file listed under the appropriate query section below.
With the exception of the basic index.php template file, Theme developers can choose whether they
want to implement a particular template file or not. If WordPress cannot find a template file with a
matching name, it skips down to the next file name in the hierarchy. If WordPress cannot find any
matching template file, index.php (the Theme's home page template file) will be used.
Examples
If your blog is at http://example.com/wp/ and a visitor clicks on a link to a category page like
http://example.com/wp/category/your‐cat/, WordPress looks for a template file in the current
Theme's directory that matches the category's ID. If the category's ID is 4, WordPress looks for a
template file named category‐4.php. If it is missing, WordPress next looks for a generic category
template file, category.php. If this file does not exist either, WordPress looks for a generic archive
template, archive.php. If it is missing as well, WordPress falls back on the main Theme template file,
index.php.
If a visitor goes to your home page at http://example.com/wp/, WordPress first determines whether
it has a static front page. If a static front page has been set, then WordPress loads that page according
to the page template hierarchy. If a static front page has not been set, then WordPress looks for a
template file called home.php and uses it to generate the requested page. If home.php is missing,
WordPress looks for a file called index.php in the active theme's directory, and uses that template to
generate the page.
The Template Hierarchy in Detail
The following sections describe the order in which template files are being called by WordPress for
each query type.
Home Page display
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• home.php
• index.php
Single Post display
• single.php
• index.php
Page display
• pagetemplate.php ‐ Where pagetemplate.php is the Page Template assigned to the Page.
• page.php
• index.php
Category display
• category‐slug.php ‐ If the category's slug were news, WordPress would look for category‐
news.php
• category‐id.php ‐ If the category's ID were 6, WordPress would look for category‐6.php
• category.php
• archive.php
• index.php
Tag display
• tag‐slug.php ‐ If the tag's slug were some tag, WordPress would look for tag‐sometag.php
• tag.php
• archive.php
• index.php
Author display
• author.php
• archive.php
• index.php
Date display
• date.php
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• archive.php
• index.php
Search Result display
• search.php
• index.php
404 (Not Found) display
• 404.php
• index.php
Attachment display
• MIME_type.php ‐ it can be any MIME type (image.php, video.php, audio.php, application.php
or any other).
• attachment.php
• single.php
• index.php
The template hierarchy functions are located in wp‐includes/theme.php.
Template Tags/Anatomy of a Template Tag
Introduction
This document provides a brief examination of the animal known as the WordPress template tag, to
help those who may be new to WordPress and PHP understand what template tags are and how
they're used.
A WordPress template tag is made up of three components:
• A PHP code tag
• A WordPress function
• Optional parameters
PHP code tag
WordPress is built with the PHP scripting language. Though you certainly don't need to be a PHP
developer to use it, knowing a little about the language can go a long way in getting the most out of
WordPress. Here we provide a tiny bit of that PHP knowledge:
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<?php ?>
The above shows the opening (<?php) and closing (?>) tag elements used to embed PHP functions and
code in a HTML document, i.e. web page. There are a number of ways to embed PHP within a page,
but this is the most "portable," in that it works on nearly every web server—as long as the server
supports PHP (typically a document's filename also needs to end with the extension .php, so the server
recognizes it as a PHP document).
Anything within this tag is parsed and handled by the PHP interpreter, which runs on the web server
(the interpreter is the PHP engine that figures out what the various functions and code do, and returns
their output). For our purposes, the PHP tag lets you place WordPress functions in your page template,
and through these generate the dynamic portions of your blog.
WordPress function
A WordPress or template function is a PHP function that performs an action or displays information
specific to your blog. And like a PHP function, a WordPress function is defined by a line of text (of one
or more words, no spaces), open and close brackets (parentheses), and typically a semi‐colon, used to
end a code statement in PHP. An example of a WordPress function is:
the_ID();
the_ID() displays the ID number for a blog entry or post. To use it in a page template, you slip it into
the PHP tag shown above:
<?php the_ID(); ?>
This is now officially a WordPress template tag, as it uses the PHP tag with a WordPress function.
Optional parameters
The final item making up a template tag is one you won't necessarily make use of unless you want to
customize the tag's functionality. This, or rather these, are the parameters or arguments for a function.
Here is the template function bloginfo(), with the show parameter being passed the 'name' value:
<?php bloginfo('name'); ?>
If your blog's name is Super Weblog, the bloginfo() template tag, when using 'name' as the show
parameter value, will display that name where it's embedded in your page template.
Not all template tags accept parameters (the_ID() is one), and those which do accept different ones
based on their intended use, so that the_content() accepts parameters separate from those which
get_calendar() can be passed.
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Template Tags
Template tags are used within your blog's Templates to display information dynamically or otherwise
customize your blog, providing the tools to make it as individual and interesting as you are. Below is a
list of the general user tags available in WordPress, sorted by function‐specific category.
Include tags
• get_header
• get_sidebar
• get_search_form
• comments_template
• get_footer
Blog info tags
• bloginfo
• bloginfo_rss
• get_bloginfo
• get_bloginfo_rss
Lists & Dropdown tags
• wp_list_authors
• wp_list_categories
• wp_list_pages
• wp_list_bookmarks
• wp_list_comments
• wp_get_archives
• wp_page_menu
• wp_dropdown_pages
• wp_dropdown_categories
• wp_dropdown_users
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Login/Logout tags
• is_user_logged_in
• wp_login_url
• wp_logout_url
• wp_lostpassword_url
• wp_registration_url
• wp_logout
• wp_loginout
• wp_register
Post tags
• the_ID
• the_title
• the_title_rss
• the_title_attribute
• single_post_title
• the_content
• the_content_rss
• the_excerpt
• the_excerpt_rss
• wp_link_pages
• posts_nav_link
• next_post_link
• next_posts_link
• previous_post_link
• previous_posts_link
• next_image_link
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• previous_image_link
• sticky_class
• the_category
• the_category_rss
• the_tags
• the_meta
Comment tags
• wp_list_comments
• comments_number
• comments_link
• comments_rss_link
• comments_popup_script
• comments_popup_link
• comment_ID
• comment_id_fields
• comment_author
• comment_author_link
• comment_author_email
• comment_author_email_link
• comment_author_url
• comment_author_url_link
• comment_author_IP
• comment_type
• comment_text
• comment_excerpt
• comment_date
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• comment_time
• comment_form_title
• comment_author_rss
• comment_text_rss
• get_avatar
• permalink_comments_rss
• comment_reply_link
• cancel_comment_reply_link
• previous_comments_link
• next_comments_link
• paginate_comments_links
Category tags
• the_category
• the_category_rss
• single_cat_title
• category_description
• wp_dropdown_categories
• wp_list_categories
Tag tags
• the_tags
• tag_description
• single_tag_title
• wp_tag_cloud
• wp_generate_tag_cloud
Author tags
• the_author
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• the_author_link
• the_author_posts
• the_author_posts_link
• the_author_meta
• wp_list_authors
• wp_dropdown_users
Date and Time tags
• the_time
• the_date
• the_date_xml
• the_modified_time
• the_modified_date
• the_modified_author
• single_month_title
Edit Link tags
• edit_post_link
• edit_comment_link
• edit_tag_link
• edit_bookmark_link
• Permalink tags
• permalink_anchor
• get_permalink
• the_permalink
• permalink_single_rss
Links Manager tags
• wp_list_bookmarks
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• get_bookmarks
• get_bookmark
• get_bookmark_field
Trackback tags
• trackback_url
• trackback_rdf
Title tags
• wp_title
• single_post_title
• single_cat_title
• single_tag_title
• single_month_title
• the_search_query
Query tags
• get_posts
• query_posts
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Chapter 11: Working with Images
A picture says more than a thousand words.
WordPress makes it easy for you to add images to your WordPress site. You can upload them directly
from within WordPress by using the built‐in file uploading utility in the post screen. Or you could use
any FTP Client software to upload many images to your WordPress site.
The Quicktag buttons feature an image link, making it easy to link to images from within your post as
you write it. If you used the inline upload feature, your picture will be in the /wp‐content/uploads
folder, unless you've specified another folder on the Miscellaneous admin panel.
WordPress can now (within the posting page) resize images and create thumbnails. There are also
photo galleries that can show many images without adding each one separately to a page.
Styling Images in WordPress
Current versions of WordPress now have image alignment built‐in. WordPress adds CSS classes to align
the image to the right, left, and center of a paragraph, so the text will wrap around the image.
In order to take advantage of these new CSS classes for image alignment and the text wrapping around
the image, the WordPress Theme must include the following in the style.css found in the WordPress
Theme directory.
img.alignright {float:right; margin:0 0 1em 1em}
img.alignleft {float:left; margin:0 1em 1em 0}
img.aligncenter {display: block; margin‐left: auto; margin‐right: auto}
a img.alignright {float:right; margin:0 0 1em 1em}
a img.alignleft {float:left; margin:0 1em 1em 0}
a img.aligncenter {display: block; margin‐left: auto; margin‐right: auto}
When adding the image in your WordPress blog, select the image alignment as right, left, or center in
the Image/Media Panel.
The image will be embedded into your blog post with the selected style for alignment such as:
<img src="http://example.com/images/leaf.jpg"
alt="leaf graphic"
title="leaf graphic"
class="alignright size‐medium wp‐image‐3109"
height="25" width="30"/>
Using Images in Posts
Images can be used in a variety of methods in your WordPress posts and Pages. They can be a major
subject, or a referenced detail that enhances the information or story.
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The first thing you should consider is the "look" of the images on your page. Not what the images are
of, but the general look of how they flow and interact with the rest of the content on your page.
Wrapping Text Around Images helps you to begin to understand how images interact with the text
around them, changing the margins, padding and borders around the images within the content. It will
also help you understand how to create captions under your images.
The next thing to consider is the size of the images. There are two ways of actually sizing an image. It is
either the size that it is, or a thumbnail link which, when clicked, takes the user to a new page with an
enlarged image of the graphic.
Inserting Images into Posts
Inserting an image into a post still seems to confuse a lot of people.
There are 2 steps involved to inserting an image into a post. First, the image file must be uploaded
onto your web server before it can be inserted into a post. The second step is to actually insert the
image into the post in the appropriate location.
The simplest way to do this is to use the "Add Media" function on the post screen (beside the "Visual"
and "HTML" tabs). Choose the appropriate button depending on whether you are adding photos,
videos, audio, or miscellaneous media (e.g. PDF files). This method will complete both steps as
outlined above.
In the "From Computer" area of the screen you need to upload the desired image file. NOTE: Before
hitting the "Upload from Computer" button it is recommended that you select the "Browser Uploader"
instead of using the default Flash Uploader. After selecting the "Browser Uploader", hit the "Browse..."
button and choose the desired image file on your computer. Then, hit the "Upload" button. Your
image file is now on your web server.
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Make sure you give the image an appropriate title, as well as a relevant description if desired. Choose
the desired alignment and size, and hit the "insert into post" button. Your image is now inserted into
the post at the location where your cursor was last active.
Every time you upload an image to your web server it is added to the Library of images that are
available for that blog. If you want to insert the same image into another post go to the Library, hit the
"Show" link, and then follow the same instructions to insert that image into another location or post.
Image Size and Quality
The size and quality of an image for use on a web page is determined by a variety of things.
Physical Size
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The physical size of an image is based upon two things: The size of the image on the screen and the file
size. Generally, the file size is treated as a different issue.
File Size
This is the size of the file on your hard drive or server.
Resolution
Resolution refers to the number of pixels in an image. Resolution is sometimes identified by the width
and height of the image as well as the total number of pixels in the image.
File Type
There are several image types popularly found on the Internet: jpeg, gif, png and for favicons‐‐the
icons next to the address‐‐ico.
The physical size of the image is information we need to know in order to determine how much
"space" will the image occupy on a web page. If your WordPress Theme features a fixed width content
area of 600 pixels and the image you want to use is 800, the image will push the sidebar and layout of
your web page around, messing up your design. Images within that 600 pixel width need to be
restricted to that maximum width in order to protect the layout of your page. It's up to you to
determine what size they should be from there, matching the image to your overall layout and styles.
File size dictates the time it takes to load your page, the larger the file size, often increased because of
a high image resolution quality, the longer it will take to load. People often don't have the patience to
wait through long web page loads, so keeping your file sizes low speeds up your web page access
times. Typically, large high quality images should be kept between 100K and 60K. Smaller images
should be closer to 30K and lower.
The resolution of the image dictates its clarity. The higher the resolution, though, the larger the file
size, so you have to make a compromise between quality and file size.
Luckily, the various file types most commonly used on the Internet have compression features. When
you save the file as one of these types, it condenses or compresses the data information in the image
file. Internet browsers can decompress this information to display the image on the screen. Some
graphic software programs allow you to set the compression rate to control the quality of the image
(and file size) at the time you save it. Depending upon your use of the images on your site, you may
have to experiment with this to get the right ratio that keeps the resolution quality good while
maintaining a small file size.
Websites use four common file types. The end of a filename (called the extension) tells what type it is.
One type, ico, is to make a favicon file ‐‐ but this is usually only done when a website is first set up. The
other three types are used for general images:
jpg (JPEG) is good for photographs. Saving a photo as jpg removes detail from the photo. Good photo
editors let you control how much detail is removed (the "compression"). Different photos need
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different compression; doing this carefully and viewing the result can give you a usable photo with a
small file size.
gif can be poor for photographs. It's better for line art, like logos, with solid areas of the same color.
png is for both photographs and line art. It compresses photos without losing detail, but usually makes
larger photo files than JPEGs. Some older browsers don't completely support png, though.
If you aren't sure which file type is best for a particular image, try saving the image in more than one
type and comparing the file sizes. Using the right type can make a big difference! There's more
information in Sitepoint's GIF‐JPG‐PNG What's the Difference article.
Resizing Images
Not all graphic software packages allow you to resize images, though most should. Check your graphics
software table of contents or index for resize, size, transform, reduce, or enlarge, all synonyms for the
for the same thing. If they don't have the feature, you may have to find different software.
The process of resizing images is fairly simple. There are usually two methods:
1) You can resize an image through the use of tools provided which allow you to manually shift the
edges of an image to deform or resize the image. The best way is to grab a corner, not the edge, to
resize the image. The corner "handle" will usually resize the image maintaining the overall height‐
width ratio. Check your manual for specific instructions.
2) The other method involves simply specifying the image's final size. The advanced graphics programs
allow you to set it by exact dimensions or a percentage of reduction or enlargement.
After resizing the image, the image may be smaller, but it may also be slightly out of focus. You can
sharpen the focus of the small image by using the sharpen feature in your software.
When you have fine‐tuned your small sized image or new thumbnail, export the image as a jpg, gif, or
png.
Styling Images
Images can have borders, frames, captions, and be styled in many different ways. There are basically
two ways to style an image on your site. You can style it from within the style sheet or inline on a
specific image.
Styling All Images
Styling your images from within the style.css of your WordPress Theme can cover the styling for every
image on your site, or specific images.
To style every image on your site to look a particular way, look for or add the CSS selector for the
image tag. Then add your styles to the tag. For instance, let's say that you want a black border around
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all of your images and you want space between the border and the image, as well as the appropriate
spacing around the image and the text.
img {
margin: 5px;
padding: 10px;
border: solid black 1px
}
Maybe you want something a little more dramatic. You can change the border thickness and set it to a
"double" line. And maybe you really want to isolate your image from the rest of the text, so you
increase the margin around the image.
img {
margin: 20px;
padding: 10px;
border: double black 1px
}
Styling Some Images
You can add to your style sheet a specific style for certain images. If you have already styled all of your
images, you must make sure you specify every style declaration or attribute specified in the image tag
style in order to override that attribute. If you do not change the margin, then it will remain the same
in the new style. This is called the CSS Parent/Child Relationship.
Let's say you would like to have some images in your posts filed in the category of Nature have a nice
green background. The rest of the images should look the same, just the ones you add in your Nature
category. You simply add a class to your style sheet and each image within that category.
To make it easy to remember, we'll call our class "nature". We want to have a very dark green thick
border and a medium green background around the image to highlight it.
img.nature {
margin: 20px;
padding: 20px;
border:solid #003300 4px;
background: #006600;
}
On each of the images within that category, you simply add the class for "nature":
<img src="leaf.gif" alt="Red leaf" class="nature" />
If you need more styles for different images, you can create more of them as needed.
Styling One or Two Images Inline
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There are times when you just want one or two images on your site to look different from the rest.
This technique is called inline styles. It applies the CSS styles directly to the image itself.
For example, say you want to have an image isolated against a back background to call attention to it.
<img src="leaf.gif" alt="Red leaf" style="padding:20px;
background: black; border: none" />
This is not a technique to use on every image. It is to be used on occasional images that need a "little
something special."
Wrapping Text Around Images
Current versions of WordPress now have image alignment built‐in. WordPress adds CSS classes to align
the image to the right, left, and center of a paragraph, so the text will wrap around the image.
In order to take advantage of these new CSS classes for image alignment and the text wrapping around
the image, the WordPress Theme must include the following in the style.css found in the WordPress
Theme directory.
img.alignright {float:right; margin:0 0 1em 1em}
img.alignleft {float:left; margin:0 1em 1em 0}
img.aligncenter {display: block; margin‐left: auto; margin‐right: auto}
a img.alignright {float:right; margin:0 0 1em 1em}
a img.alignleft {float:left; margin:0 1em 1em 0}
a img.aligncenter {display: block; margin‐left: auto; margin‐right: auto}
When adding the image in your WordPress blog, select the image alignment as right, left, or center in
the Image/Media Panel.
The image will be embedded into your blog post with the selected style for alignment such as:
alt="leaf graphic"
title="leaf graphic"
class="alignright size‐medium wp‐image‐3109"
height="25" width="30"/>
Giving The Image Style
There are times when you want an image on your post to fill the screen, or sit in the middle of text
with writing above and below it, but most of the time you want your image to sit on one side or the
other of the text and have the text flow or wrap around the image. While the styles above will float the
image left and right, you may want to add more design elements to your image.
Let's start from the beginning with a simple guide to using images in your WordPress blog.
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First, here is a look at a typical image tag in your post, without the instructions for wrapping the text
around the image. Note that we've added both the title and alt attributes to the tag; alt is important
for accessibility, title is for the image tooltip.
alt="leaf graphic"
title="leaf graphic" />
To begin the process of setting your image up to be wrapped, there are a few changes that you may
need to make to the style sheet that controls your WordPress site. CSS offers a great list of resources
for creating and editing Cascading Style Sheets.
From your WordPress Theme folder, open the style.css file in a text‐editor. Important! Save a back up
copy somewhere before you do any edits! Now, do a search for img. Hopefully, all your image
selectors will be grouped together. If not, find them all and cut and paste them into one group to make
this process easier.
Borders
You'll need to decide if you want a border around your images and, if you do, what size, color, and
type it should be. For no border, you would use the following:
img {border:0}
For 1 pixel solid red line border, add:
img {border:solid red 1px}
If you create a link around an image, some browsers will put a border around the image to let the
visitor know it's a link. If you don't want that, use the following:
a img {border:0}
You can still add a hover around the image so when the visitor moves their mouse over the image, not
only will the mouse pointer turn into a hand, the image will get a colorful border:
a:hover img { border:solid red 1px; }
Padding and Image Width
Let's clean up one more thing to make the image in your content work better with the rest of the
styles we will use.
We want to clear all the padding around the images within your content and make sure that the whole
width of the image shows up rather than just a part of it. If it isn't in your style sheet, add the
following:
p img { padding: 0; max‐width: 100%; }
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Image Left, Right, and Center
When an image sits on the sides of your text, it helps to have space between the text and the image so
the words aren't right up against the edge. As some browsers treat the margins and padding
differently, the following styles will accommodate most browser's "space requirements" so the image
doesn't overlap the text or any lists that appear inline with the image.
img.right { padding: 4px; margin: 0 0 2px 7px; display: inline; }
img.left { padding: 4px; margin: 0 7px 2px 0; display: inline; }
The declaration of display:inline keeps the image inline with the text that you placed it with.
Now, it is time to add the float declaration to the images. BUT WAIT. Why should we waste our left
and right floats on just images? Why not use them on anything that we want to sit on the right or left
of the page and have the text float around it? You can do that, you know. But that's for another
tutorial. We're not going to waste this, so if it isn't there in your style sheet already, add the following:
.right { float: right; }
.left { float: left; }
Note: The Default/Kubrick Theme uses this technique but names the classes alignleft and alignright.
Using left and right seems easier to remember and use, but either name sets may be used to make this
work.
So what about centering the image? Yes, you can still do that too. The center tag isn't valid anymore,
so you can create a style for centering things:
img.centered { display: block; margin‐left: auto; margin‐right: auto; }
Left, Right, and Centered Examples
This sounds like a lot of complicated stuff, but once this is done, you will never have to mess with it
again. We hope. To use it, create the link to your image and add class="right", class="left", or
class="centered" and the image will move to the right, left, or center and the text will wrap around it.
It's just that simple.
<img src="/images/leaf.gif" class="right" alt="Red leaf" title="Red Leaf" />This is some text that will
wrap around the image that sits on the right side of the text that you are writing about the leaf that is
there. That is, if you are writing about leaves in the first place and you want to write about this specific
leaf.
This is some text that will wrap around the image that sits on the right side of the text that you are
writing about the leaf that is there. That is, if you are writing about leaves in the first place and you
want to write about this specific leaf.
<p>This is text that sits above the leaf image that you might be writing about in your post if you were
to write about leaves. <img src="/images/leaf.gif" class="centered" alt="Red leaf" title="Red Leaf"
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/>This is some text that will sit below the text image and you can continue to write about the leaf that
is there.</p>
This is text that sits above the leaf image that you might be writing about in your post if you were to
write about leaves.
This is some text that will sit below the text image and you can continue to write about the leaf that is
there.
Alternative Text Size
Some browsers will now allow you to control the size of the text created by the ALT tag. This is the text
that appears when you hold your mouse over an image or when the the image fails to load. You can
set it to any size, but something much smaller than your content's font size would be a good idea.
img {font‐size:60%}
Captioning The Image
Images tend to just sit there, looking pretty. The alt and title properties say a little something about
what the image looks like, but other than that, unless you add some text around it, it just sits there. So
create a caption style that adds some "spice."
.caption { margin: 5px; padding: 5px; border: solid 1px #E5E5FF; background: #E5F2FF; font‐size:90%;
color: black }
In the above example, we've added a border and a little hint of background color, but you can style it
however you want. We recommend that you at least make the text a difference size and padding to
the overall container so it is distinguished from the rest of the post's content.
<div class="caption right">
<img src="http://example.com/images/leaf.jpg" alt="leaf graphic" title="leaf graphic">
Red Leaf</div>
Red Leaf
This is text that wraps around the leaf image that features a caption. You might want a caption under
the picture of the leaf if you were writing about leaves in your post. The caption sits below the text and
helps the user to understand what the picture is about.
In the example above, we just added the right class to the container which will position it as a float to
the right, allowing the text to flow around it. Using the left class would float it to the left, and centered
would give you the text, image centered, text effect.
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Clear The Display
In the event that the image is larger than the amount of text that would otherwise surround it, causing
the image to hang like a flag over some element below it, then at some point in the text, you'll want to
clear the display. Note that there is no text inside this division.
<div style="clear:both;"></div>
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Chapter 12: Designing Headers
They say you cannot judge a book by its cover, and yet every day people do. They pick up a book, look
at the cover, and then are moved to either put it down, turn it over, or open it up just because of how
the cover looks. Websites are also judged by their covers and the first impression often comes from
the header.
The header of your site is typically the first thing people see. From this masthead or header art across
the top of your page, people make sweeping judgments about what they are about to see and read.
The same people who say you cannot judge a book by its cover, also say that you only have 30 seconds
to make a good impression. In the world of the Internet where the next web page is a click away, you
have much less than that.
We are going to take you inside the architecture of a WordPress header and offer tips on how to
customize it to become your own book cover, enticing people into your site with a good first
impression. Then we will offer some tips from some experts on what makes a good website header.
The WordPress Header
By default, the WordPress header is a simple piece of code. You do not have to get into the code to
change the header that comes with whatever WordPress Theme you choose. You set the blog or
website title and description in the Administration > Settings > General panel, and WordPress does the
rest.
In its simplest form, the WordPress Classic Theme features the header code like this in the wp‐
content/themes/classic/header.php template file:
<h1 id="header">
<a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a>
</h1>
The header is set in an h1 HTML tag and features one template tag used with two different options or
parameters. You can learn more about these parameters in the documentation for bloginfo().
Basically, the first one displays the URL of the website in a link, and the second one displays the name
of the blog or website as set in the Administration > Settings > General panel. When the user moves
the mouse over the header title, the header can be clicked to return back to the main or front page of
the site as set in the Administration > Settings > General panel.
The WordPress Default Theme features an image in the background and presents the header like this
in wp‐content/themes/default/header.php:
<div id="header">
<div id="headerimg">
<h1>
<a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>">
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<?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a>
</h1>
<div class="description">
<?php bloginfo('description'); ?>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Again, the template tag featuring the name of the blog or website is in a link, but this shows another
usage similar to the URL request above. It gets the same information, just in a different way. It also
adds the description of the site from the Administration > Settings > General panel.
Basically, these two header examples do the same thing in different ways. They provide information in
the header, with the potential for an image, and make the header title clickable to help navigation on
the site. It is just a matter of how much information you want in your header, and how that
information is displayed.
Using the first example from the Classic Theme, an image can still be used in the background, set
within the style sheet in the h1 selector, but the second one gives more control to the use of an image
in the header by giving it its own division. How these look are totally controlled by the style sheet.
Styling the Header
As listed in the two above examples, the styles for the header are contained within the h1, header,
headerimg, and description CSS selectors. These are all found within the style.css, though may be
found in the styles in the header.php of the Theme you are using. You will have to check both places.
In the Classic Theme, the CSS for the header are found in one selector, the #header.
#header {
background: #90a090;
border‐bottom: double 3px #aba;
border‐left: solid 1px #9a9;
border‐right: solid 1px #565;
border‐top: solid 1px #9a9;
font: italic normal 230% 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;
letter‐spacing: 0.2em;
margin: 0;
padding: 15px 10px 15px 60px;
}
The background color is set to a green shade and there is a border all the way around the header
which changes colors creating a recessed, shadow effect. The Times font is set with a size of 230% with
a wider than normal letter spacing. The padding on the left side indents the text in from the left.
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All of these can be easily changed, giving the border a thicker width and making it all the same color,
changing the background color, the font size and style, the letter spacing, and more by modifying the
information in each style attribute.
The same is true of the Default WordPress Theme header, except there are more styles to think about
and they are found within the header.php's "head" tag and the style.css, though once you have your
styles set, you can move the information into your style sheet.
The styles that control the header's look are found within the h1, header, headerimg, and description
CSS selectors. Just like the Classic Theme, find these references and make your modifications there to
change the look.
Changing the header image of the Default WordPress Theme has been simplified with the introduction
of a utility called Kubrickr. It simply asks you to supply a new image file name for the header and then
switches it for you, so you do not have to dig into the code. If all you want to change is the header
image, this is an extremely useful and easy tool.
If you do want to get your hands into the code, dig into your header styles and make the changes.
Below is a simple tutorial on changing just the header image manually.
Changing the Header Image
There are many different header images and header art available for you to use to change the image in
the header. The styles for the header image for the Default or Kubrick WordPress Theme, and any
Theme based upon that Theme, are more complicated to change than those for the Classic Theme. The
styles are found within the styles in the header.php "head" section, as well as in the styles.css. To
change only the header image reference, open the header.php template file and look for the styles like
this:
#header {
background: url("<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/images/wc_header.jpg")
no‐repeat bottom center; }
#headerimg {
margin: 7px 9px 0;
height: 192px;
width: 740px; }
NOTE: The use of the bloginfo tag only works when the style is used within the head of the template
file. WordPress template tags will not work in the style sheet (style.css). To move this style to the style
sheet, change the template tag to the actual address (URL) of the header image graphic.
To change the image file, replace the "kubrickheader.jpg" with the name of the new graphic image you
have uploaded to your site to replace it. If it is in a different directory, change that by replacing the
bloginfo() tag with the specific address of the graphic's location.
If you are using an image that is the same size, then simply replace the image. If it is a different size, fill
in the height and width of the image in the next section called #headerimg. If you do not know, and
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are using Windows, view the folder in which the image resides on your computer in Thumbnail view
mode. Click View > Thumbnail from the Windows Explorer menu. In Thumbnail view mode, find your
image and hold the mouse over it. A small balloon tip will pop up listing the dimensions. Use that
information in the styles. Otherwise, just right click on the image file and choose Properties and it
should give you the file size and dimensions.
Save the template file and upload it and the image to your website and take a look. Some changes may
need to be made to fine‐tune the placement and look.
With the header image in place, it is time to tackle the rest of the header. Open your style.css style
sheet file and look for the following:
• h1
• header
• headerimg
• description
Your Theme may or may not have all of these, but the Default Theme has all of them in different
places within the style sheet. All or some of these may need to have the attributes changed to change
the look of your header.
If you change the size of the header image or header art, be sure and change the other structural CSS
selectors like content and sidebar to accommodate the change in the header size.
Header Image Specifications
A header image that fits within the Default WordPress Theme is about 192 x 740 pixels. If you are
replacing the header within any WordPress Theme, check the size of the header image and then find a
replacement that matches that size. If you choose a header image that is smaller or wider or taller
than the replacement, you may have to modify the other structural elements of the web page to allow
for the change in size of the header.
If you are modifying the entire site's Theme, the width of the overall page or content area needs to be
taken into consideration for the header image's size. The two most common screen sizes are 1024x768
and 800x600 pixels. Yet, wide screen monitors are gaining ground and web designers now need to
prepare for screen widths of 1280x1024 and 1600x1200.
If you set your website to "float," positioned in the middle of the browser window with space on either
side, then you can set your header width to whatever you want. If you are designing a Theme with a
flexible or "elastic" screen width, then the width of your header becomes important.
If you are using a header image that can be repeated, and you are using elastic widths, you can set the
styles within the header to repeat to fill the space:
#header {
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background: url("/images/kubrickheader.jpg")
repeat‐x top left; }
This sets the header image to repeat horizontally beginning from the top left corner and going across.
You can adjust these to whatever background position your header design and layout needs.
Header Art
A new term growing in the web design field is header art. These are header images that are usually
handmade using combinations of color, shapes, symbols, images, and text. They can take some time
and labor to create. While there are some free header art sites, some sites sell their handmade header
art. Although a photograph may be unique in its own way and convey the needed visual style,
handmade header artwork is easier to match to other web page colors and is usually more
aesthetically pleasing because of its distinctive nature.
Choosing pre‐made header art has some benefits. The artists have already done the work and all you
have to do is choose the design that best matches your website. And the graphic is ready to use,
already sized and saved as a small file size.
Header Art Copyrights
The best header art to use, if you do not want to generate your own, is any that bear the Creative
Commons License that specifically allows its public use. Read the individual license for the image's use
to make sure that you have permission to use the header art on your site. Usually you must attribute
the author, share alike and not use it for commercial purposes. If in doubt, always ask permission from
the author before use.
As header art is made and licensed "as is" by the designer/artist, some header art cannot be modified
without the artist's permission. Check the website copyrights and licenses and ask if you are in doubt
and wish to modify the artwork.
Designing Your Own Header Art
You can also design your own header art. Any graphic design software program will work. Popular ones
include Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Elements, JASC PaintShop Pro, The Gimp and Macromedia
Fireworks. The graphic design software should have the ability to resize and control the resolution and
type of the image when saved. The size of your header art should be the size of the header container
you're going to put it in.
You can use your own photographs, artwork, fonts, and any combination of images to create your
header art. When done, save it "for the web" as a jpg, gif, or .png file. For an explanation on which to
use read Sitepoint's GIF‐JPG‐PNG What's the Difference article. These file types will compress the
image's resolution, reducing the file's size. In general, avoid file sizes larger than 50K as larger sizes
tend to slow a site access times.
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Hiding the Header Text
Many Themes and Theme designers want to feature their header with a picture only, no text. Some
will put the text in the graphic image, therefore not requiring the actual use of the text. One option is
to remove the template tags that generate the title and description. The other option is to leave it in,
but hide it.
To hide the header text while leaving it in the code, do not change anything in your template files. Only
change the CSS. Add display:none to the CSS selectors you do not want to appear. For example, to hide
the text within the h1 selector:
h1 {display:none; font‐size: 230%; color: blue;.......
It is still there, but the browser has been commanded to not show it in any way. The container literally
is "not there."
It might be hidden, but some web page screen readers and search engines will still find the
information. If you are serious about making your site be accessible, some newer text readers access
the style sheet and do not read the elements marked display:none. There are two popular methods for
working around this. One is to use the display:none as outlined above, but also include an aural style
sheet that changes that selector to display:block, "turning the visibility" back on. The other method is
to position the content literally "off the page" by a negative indent. Here is an example:
h1 {
font‐size: 0;
text‐indent: ‐1000px; }
This technique moves the entire h1 tag and its contents physically off the web page. The screen reader
will still "read" the text because it is there, but it will not display on the page. Extensive testing has
proven so far that this technique works across most browsers and with all screen readers.
Making the Whole Header Clickable
To make the entire header, graphic and all, clickable, you must put the header graphic inside of a link.
There are two ways to do this. You can put the graphic directly into the WordPress Theme manually, or
you can use the stylesheet to define the link size area to encompass the header art area.
To make the header art clickable by embedding it into the header, in the wp‐
content/themes/classic/header.php template file of your WordPress Theme, change the following:
<div id="header">
<h1><a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>/">
</h1>
</div>
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to:

<div id="header">
<a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>">
<img src="http://example.com/headerimage.jpg" alt="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?>" />
</a>
<h1><a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>">" title="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?>">
</h1>
You can style the h1 heading to overlap or sit below, or not even be visible in the header.
To make the overall area of the header clickable, the header must have a width area set for the h1
anchor HTML tag to make the clickable area cover the header image in the background. The styles are
set in the stylesheet.
The HTML and WordPress Template Tags look like this, the same as above:
<pre><div id="header">
<h1><a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>/">
</h1>
</div>
The CSS would then be styled something like this to enlarge the clickable link area and hide the header
text (optional), customized to your own design needs.
#header h1 a {
width: 400px;
height: 100px;
display: block;
background: url(images/headerimage.gif) no‐repeat top left;
}
#header h1 a span { display: none; }
Another option is to add a script to make the header section clickable, which may not work for all
browsers. This is showcased in the Default WordPress Theme (Kubrick) with its clickable header:
• Open the wp‐content/themes/default/header.php template file.
• Change from <div id="header"> to:
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<div id="header" onclick="location.href='http://example.com/';" style="cursor: pointer;">
If you want both text areas of the header to be clickable and not the entire header image, use the
following to make the header art and the blog title and description clickable.
<div id="header">
<div id="headerimg">
<h1>
<?php bloginfo('name'); ?>
</a>
</h1>
<div class="description">
<?php bloginfo('description'); ?>
</a>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Rotating Header Images
There are several scripts available that will allow you to rotate images within the header, sidebar, or
on any template file. We will examine the use of one of these, the Random Image Rotator.
Save the script to a separate folder in which you have the header images you wish to rotate in your
header. For this example, call it rotate.php. To use this as a background image that changes or rotates
with every load of the web page:
#header {
background: url("/images/headerimgs/rotate.php")
no‐repeat bottom center; }
To actually put this in your header, or elsewhere on your site, add an image link like this within the
header division:
<img src="/images/headerimgs/rotate.php" alt="A Random Header Image" />
Adding Navigation to Your Header
Headers are another area where you can add navigation elements to your website. Typically these are
horizontal menus at the top or bottom of your header. To add these, create a new division within the
header to style your header navigation elements.
This can be as simple as displaying your categories across the top of the header using one of the List
Categories template tags. Let us look at one example using the list_cats() tag.
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In this example, the list_cats() template tag is set to sort the list of categories by ID in an unordered list
(<ul><li>) without dates or post counts, does not hide empty categories, uses category "description"
for the title in the links, does not show the children of the parent categories, and excludes categories 1
and 33. It sits in its own "category" division. Notice that a link to the "home" page or front page has
been included manually at the start of the list.
<div id="header">
<div id="categorylist">
ul><li>
<a title="Home Page" href="index.php">HOME</a></li>
<?php list_cats(FALSE, '', 'ID', 'asc', '', TRUE, FALSE,
FALSE, FALSE, TRUE, FALSE, FALSE, '', FALSE,
'', '', '1,33', TRUE); ?>
</ul>
</div><!‐‐ end of categorylist ‐‐>
<h1><a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></h1>
</div><!‐‐ end of header ‐‐>
To style this list, the #categorylist in the style.css might be:
#categorylist {font‐size:12px; font‐style:normal;
text‐transform:uppercase; }
#categorylist ul {list‐style‐type: none; list‐style‐image:none;
margin:0; padding‐bottom: 20px; }
#categorylist li { display: inline; padding: 0px 5px;}
#categorylist a:link, #category a:visited {color:blue}
#categorylist a:hover {color:red}
It might look like this:
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Header Tips
Here are some tips and information to help you choose and customize your WordPress site's header.
Pay attention to text placement and color.
The colors and placement of the text within a header can add or subtract to your presentation. Here
are some tips.
If you use white text, make sure there is a background color in the header and/or headerimg
to showcase the white text again if for some reason the image does not appear on the screen
or the user has "show images" turned off. This will allow your white text to still be visible.
If the image has a main feature or element, position the text so it does not cover the main
subject of the image.
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If the text is hard to read against a busy area of the graphic, position the text to a less busy
area of the header image.
Make sure the color of the text is easily seen by your visitors and does not clash with the
header art colors. Fluorescent orange text on a lime green background is painful.
Be aware that some color differences and patterns in your header art may make the text
letters in your overlaid text "disappear." The same applies if you embed the text in your
header art or header image.
Have a purpose and point.
A good header reflects the content of the site. The rest of the site has to meet expectations and live up
to the header, so the header must reflect the content, purpose and intention of the site.
It should invite visitors to remain.
A good header is like the cover of a book or magazine. It should encourage people to stay and have a
look around, read and look more, and find something of value. It is the teaser, the lead that grabs their
attention and says "there is something worth exploring here."
It should blend in with the overall look.
Bold and dramatic headers lend themselves to boldly designed sites, whereas soft and pastel colored
sites lend themselves to gentler graphic headers. A site dedicated to punk rock and grunge should
have a header look punky and grungy. It is up to you, but think consistency.
Headers do not need to have pictures.
Not all headers must have pictures and graphics. Sometimes the words are more important, whether
they are against a wash of color or a white background.
Cluttered headers are still cluttered.
Avoid cramming ads, navigation, text, scrolling news feeds, and the kitchen sink into your header.
Simple is always better.
Maintain accessibility standards in your header.
We mentioned hiding the header text, and there is more you can do to make sure your header meets
accessibility standards. Use the h1 tag so screen readers will recognize it as a header. Use titles and alt
descriptions in links and images used in the template file (not in the style sheet as background images).
Headers can be any height, but remember content sells.
The average header is less than 200 pixels high, but headers range in height from very thin to a half
page. Remember that the main reason people visit your site is its content, and the more they have to
scroll down past your header to get to the content, the less interested they tend to be. Help lead them
to the content with your header.
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Think "Site Identity."
A header is part of the site's identify or "brand" and people like to know they are on the same site
when they click a link to another page within that site. Consider your header or header art as your
site's "brand identity".
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Glossary of Terms and Concepts
Absolute Path
An absolute path or full path is a unique location of a file or directory name within a computer or
filesystem, and usually starts with the root directory or drive letter. Directories and subdirectories
listed in a path are usually separated by a slash /.
Example: /Users/educhalk/www/blog/images/icecream.jpg
To find the absolute path of a page, copy the text below into a new text file, save the file as path.php.
Then open it in a Web browser (for example, http://www.example.com/images/path.php).
<?php
$p = getcwd();
echo $p;
?>
Apache
Apache is short for Apache HTTP Server Project, a robust, commercial‐grade, and freely‐available
open source HTTP Web Server software produced by the Apache Software Foundation. It is the most
commonly used web server on the internet, and is available on many platforms, including Windows,
Unix/Linux, and Mac OS X. Apache serves as a great foundation for publishing WordPress‐powered
sites.
ASCII
ASCII is short for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. Pronounced as "ask ee", it is a
standard set of codes used to represent numbers, letters, symbols, and punctuation marks.
Atom
A format for syndicating content on news‐like sites, viewable by Atom‐aware programs called news
readers or aggregators.
Avatar
An avatar is a graphic image or picture that represents a user.
Binaries
Binaries refer to compiled computer programs, or executables. Many open source projects, which can
be re‐compiled from source code, offer pre‐compiled binaries for the most popular platforms and
operating systems.
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Blog
A blog, or weblog, is an online journal, diary, or serial published by a person or group of people.
Blogs are typically used by individuals or peer groups, but are also frequently used by companies or
organizations as full blown websites. Blogs often contain public as well as private content.
Blogging
Blogging is the act of writing in one's blog. To blog something is to write about something in one's
blog. This sometimes involves linking to something the author finds interesting on the internet.
Blogosphere
The blogosphere is the subset of internet web sites which are, or relate to, blogs.
Blogroll
A blogroll is a list of links to various blogs or news sites. Often a blogroll is "rolled" by a service which
tracks updates (using feeds) to each site in the list, and provides the list in a form which aggregates
update information.
Bookmarklet
A bookmarklet (or favelet) is a "faux" bookmark containing scripting code, usually written in
JavaScript, that allows the user to perform a function.
Category
Each post in WordPress is filed under a category. Thoughtful categorization allows posts to be grouped
with others of similar content and aids in the navigation of a site. Please note, the post category should
not be confused with the Link Categories used to classify and manage Links.
Capabilities
Term related to User authentication and access control. It is an adoption of permissions in RBAC. There
are about thirty capabilities in WordPress.
CGI
CGI (Common Gateway Interface) is a specification for server‐side communication scripts designed to
transfer information between a Web server and a web‐client (browser). Typically, HTML pages that
collect data via forms use CGI programming to process the form data once that data is submitted by
the client.
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Character Entity
A character entity is a method used to display special characters normally reserved for use in HTML.
For example, the less than (<) and greater than (>) are used as part the HTML tag structure, so both
symbols are reserved for that use. But, if you need to display those symbols on your site, you can use
character entities. For example:
use < for the less than (<) symbol
use > for the greater than (>) symbol
Character set
A character set is a collection of symbols (letters, numbers, punctuation, and special characters), when
used together, represent meaningful words in a language. Computers use an encoding scheme so
members of a character set are stored with a numeric value (e.g. 0=A, 1=B, 2=C, 3=D). In addition, a
collation determines the order (i.e alphabetic) to use when sorting the character set. By default,
WordPress uses the Unicode UTF‐8 (utf8) character set for the WordPress MySQL database tables
created during the installation process. Beginning with Version 2.2, the database character set (and
collation) is defined in the wp‐config.php file. Also note, the character set used for syndication feeds is
set in the Administration > Settings > Reading panel.
chmod
chmod is a Unix/Linux shell command used to change permissions on files. Its name is a contraction of
"change mode."
Collation
Collation refers to the order used to sort the letters, numbers, and symbols of a given character set.
For example, because WordPress, by default, uses the UTF‐8 (utf8) character set, and when the
WordPress MySQL database tables are created during the installation process, MySQL assigns
utf8_general_ci collation to those tables. Beginning with Version 2.2, the collation (and character set)
used by WordPress is defined via the wp‐config.php file.
Comments
Comments are a feature of blogs which allow readers to respond to posts. Typically readers simply
provide their own thoughts regarding the content of the post, but users may also provide links to other
resources, generate discussion, or simply compliment the author for a well‐written post.
Comments can be controlled and regulated through the use of filters for language and content, and
often times can be queued for approval before they are visible on the web site. This is useful in dealing
with comment spam.
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Content Management System
A Content Management System, or CMS, is software for facilitating the maintenance of content, but
not design, on a web site. A blogging tool is an example of a Content Management System.
cPanel
cPanel is a popular web‐based administration tool that many hosting providers provide to allow users
to configure their own accounts using an easy‐to‐use interface.
CSS
CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is a W3C open standards programming language for specifying how a
web page is presented. It allows web site designers to create formatting and layout for a web site
independently of its content.
Database
A database in computing terms is software used to manage information in an organized fashion.
WordPress uses the MySQL relational database management system for storing and retrieving the
content of your blog, such as posts, comments, and so on.
Deprecated
Deprecated functions or template tags are no longer supported, and will soon be obsolete.
DIV
A DIV element in HTML marks a section of text. DIVs are used extensively in WordPress to apply CSS
stylings to particular blog elements.
Excerpt
An excerpt is a condensed description of your blog post and refers to the summary entered in the
Excerpt field of the Write Post SubPanel (see Advanced Editing). The excerpt is used to describe your
post in RSS feeds and is typically used in displaying search results. The excerpt is sometimes used in
displaying the Archives and Category views of your posts. The Template Tag the_excerpt() can be used
to access the contents of this field.
An excerpt should not be confused with the teaser which refers to the first 55 words of the post's
content. When typing a long post you can insert the <!‐‐more‐‐> Quicktag after a few sentences to act
as a cut‐off point. When the post is displayed, the teaser, followed by a hyperlink (such as Read the
rest of this entry...), are displayed. Your visitor can then click on that link to see the full version of your
post. The Template Tag the_content() can be used to display the teaser.
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Feed
A feed is a function of special software that allows "Feedreaders" to access a site automatically looking
for new content and then posting the information about new content and updates to another site. This
provides a way for users to keep up with the latest and hottest information posted on different
blogging sites. Some Feeds include RSS (alternately defined as "Rich Site Summary" or "Really Simple
Syndication"), Atom or RDF files. Dave Shea, author of the web design weblog Mezzoblue has written a
comprehensive summary of feeds. Feeds generally are based on XML technology.
FTP
FTP, or File Transfer Protocol, is rather predictably, a client‐server protocol for transferring files. It is
one way to download files, and the most common way to upload files to a server. An FTP client is a
program which can download files from, or upload files to, an FTP server. You may need to use an FTP
client to upload your WordPress files to your web server, particularly if you use a hosting provider.
Gallery
As defined by Andy Skelton, Gallery, introduced with WordPress 2.5, is specifically an exposition of
images attached to a post. In that same vein, an upload is "attached to a post" when you upload it
while editing a post.
In the uploader there is a "Gallery" tab that shows all of the uploads attached to the post you are
editing. When you have more than one attachment in a post, you should see at the bottom of the
Gallery tab a button marked "Insert gallery into post". That button inserts a shortcode "[gallery]" into
the post. WordPress replaces that shortcode with an exposition of all images attached to that post.
Non‐image file types are excluded from the gallery.
GMT
GMT, or Greenwich Mean Time, is the time zone from which all other time zones are measured. Local
times around the globe are calculated according to their offset from the time in Greenwich, England.
Gravatar
A gravatar is a globally recognized avatar (a graphic image or picture that represents a user). Typically
a user's gravatar is associated with their email address, and using a service such as Gravatar.com, a
blog owner to can configure their blog so that a user's gravatar is displayed along with their comments
Hack
A hack is a bit of code written to customize or extend the functionality of a software product. Older
versions of WordPress used a hack‐based extension system, but versions 1.2 and above of WordPress
use a plugin API with hooks for extensions.
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Hacking
Hacking is the process of writing code for, or contributing code to, a piece of software.
There is some controversy surrounding the meaning of this term. It began as a benign term meaning
"to exercise proficiency" or "to alter or improve," but the popular media have since construed it to
mean "to break into a computer system, usually with malicious intent." Many in the computer industry
have recently begun trying to 'take back' the word from its popular mutation, and many have adopted
the term cracking to replace the malicious interpretation. Because of the desire to reclaim the word,
you will often find the term used in conjunction with open source projects, intended in its benign form.
For more information about the history of the term, please see Wikipedia's article on Hacker.
.htaccess
A .htaccess file is a granular configuration file for the Apache web server software, used to set or alter
the server's configuration settings for the directory in which it is present, and/or its child directories.
WordPress uses an .htaccess file in conjunction with the mod_rewrite Apache module to produce
permalinks. Note that .htaccess is a hidden file in Unix/Linux (as dictated by the preceding period '.'),
meaning it may not be visible using the default settings of some FTP clients.
HTML
HTML, or Hypertext Markup Language, is the W3C standard language with which all web pages are
built. It is the predecessor to XHTML, but HTML is often still used to describe either one. It is often
used in conjunction with CSS and/or JavaScript.
IP address
An IP address is a unique number (e.g. 70.84.29.148) assigned to a computer (or other internet‐
capable information appliance, such as a network printer) to enable it to communicate with other
devices using the Internet Protocol. It is a computer's identity on the internet, and every computer
connected to the internet is assigned at least one — although the methods of assigning these
addresses, and the permanence and duration of their assignment, differ according to the use of the
computer and the circumstances of its internet use.
Every web server is assigned an IP address as well, but often times hosting providers will assign
multiple IP addresses to one computer, in the event that multiple web sites reside on the same
physical server. This is the case with most inexpensive 'managed' or 'group' hosting packages.
Domain names were created to provide an easier means of accessing internet resources than IP
addresses, which are cumbersome to type and difficult to remember. Every domain name has at least
one corresponding IP address, but only a small number of IP addresses have a domain name
associated with them, since only computers that are web servers require domain names. The Domain
Name System (DNS) is what maps Domain names to IP addresses.
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JavaScript
Developed by Netscape and Sun, JavaScript is a client‐side programming or scripting language. It's
used to create interactive and dymanic effects on a web page, as well as handle and manipulate form
data. JavaScript is a separate language from Java. All modern browsers support JavaScript, with the
exception of most text based browsers, e.g., w3m. Some excellent JavaScript references and tutorials
can be found at JavaScript Kit.
Linux
Linux is an open source computer operating system, created by Linus Torvalds, similar in style to Unix.
It is popular in web server and other high‐performance computing environments, and has recently
begun to gain popularity in workstation environments as well.
Meta
Meta has a number of meanings, but generally means information about. In WordPress, meta usually
refers to administrative type information. As described in Meta Tags in WordPress, meta is the HTML
tag used to describe and define a web page to the outside world (search engines). In the article Post
Meta Data, meta refers to information associated with each post, such as the author's name and the
date posted. Meta Rules define the general protocol to follow in using the Codex. Also, many
WordPress based sites offer a Meta section, usually found in the sidebar, with links to login or register
at that site. Finally, Meta is a MediaWiki namespace that refers to administrative functions within
Codex.
mod_rewrite
mod_rewrite is an extension module of the Apache web server software which allows for "rewriting"
of URLs on‐the‐fly. Rewrite rules use regular expressions to parse the requested URL from the client,
and translate it into a different URL before interpretation.
WordPress uses mod_rewrite for its permalink structure, which is optional functionality.
MySQL
MySQL is a popular open source SQL (Structured Query Language) database implementation, available
for many platforms, including Windows, Unix/Linux and Mac OS X. WordPress requires a MySQL
database to store all blog information, including posts, comments, metadata, and other information.
News reader
A news aggregator or news reader is a computer program which tracks syndicated information feeds,
via RSS, RDF, or Atom. Most news aggregators allow one to 'subscribe' to a feed, and automatically
keep track of the articles one has read, similar to an email client tracking read emails.
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Many blogs make their content available in feed form for the convenience of readers using news
aggregators. WordPress can generate feeds in RSS and/or Atom formats.
Open Source
Open source is simply programming code that can be read, viewed, modified, and distributed, by
anyone who desires. WordPress is distributed under an open source GNU General Public License (GPL).
Page
A Page is often used to present "static" information about yourself or your site. A good example of a
Page is information you would place on an About Page. A Page should not be confused with the time‐
oriented objects called posts. Pages are typically "timeless" in nature and live "outside" your blog.
The word "page" has long been used to describe any HTML document on the web. In WordPress,
however, "Page" refers to a very specific feature first introduced in WordPress version 1.5.
Permalink
A permalink is a URL at which a resource or article will be permanently stored. Many pages driven by
Content Management Systems contain excerpts of content which is frequently rotated, making linking
to bits of information within them a game of chance. Permalinks allow users to bookmark full articles
at a URL they know will never change, and will always present the same content.
Permalinks are optional in WordPress, but are highly recommended as they greatly increase the
cleanliness of URL. WordPress uses the Apache module mod_rewrite to implement its permalink
system.
Permissions
Permissions are security settings restricting or allowing users to perform certain functions. In the case
of files on Unix or Linux systems, there are three types of permissions: read, write, and execute. In the
case of MySQL databases, there are many more: SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, etc. — although
MySQL refers to them as privileges.
PHP
PHP is a recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. It is a popular server‐side scripting
language designed specifically for integration with HTML, and is used (often in conjunction with
MySQL) in Content Management Systems and other web applications. It is available on many
platforms, including Windows, Unix/Linux and Mac OS X, and is open source software. WordPress is
written using PHP and requires it for operation.
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phpMyAdmin
phpMyAdmin is a popular, powerful web‐based interface for administering MySQL databases. It is
open source, written in PHP, and is among the better tools available for working with MySQL
databases.
Ping
Within the WordPress interface, "ping" is sometimes used to refer to Pingbacks and Trackbacks.
In general computer terms, "ping" is a common utility used in a TCP/IP environment to determine if a
given IP Address exists or is reachable. Typically, Ping is used to diagnose a network connection
problem. Many times you will be asked, "Can you ping that address?". That means, does the Ping
utility return a success message trying to reach the "problem" IP Address?
Pingback
Pingback lets you notify the author of an article if you link to his article (article on a blog, of course). If
the links you include in an article you write on a blog lead to a blog which is pingback‐enabled, then
the author of that blog gets a notification in the form of a pingback that you linked to his article.
Plugin
A Plugin is a group of php functions that can extend the functionality present in a standard WordPress
weblog. These functions may all be defined in one php file, or maybe spread among more than one
file. Usually, a plugin is a php file that can be uploaded to the "wp‐content/plugins" directory on your
webserver, where you have installed WordPress. Once you have uploaded the plugin file, you should
be able to "turn it on" or Enable it from the "Plugins" page in the administration interface of your
weblog. The WordPress source code contains hooks that can be used by plugins.
Port
Within the context of the WordPress community, a port is a bit of code that has been rewritten to be
compatible with WordPress. For example, if someone wrote a plugin for MoveableType, WordPress
users may want to find a port of that plugin for WordPress. Port can also be used as a verb: to rewrite
a piece of software for a different platform/language.
Post Slug
A word or two describing an entry, for use in permalinks (replaces the %posttitle% field therein),
especially useful if titles tend to be long or they change frequently.
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Post Status
The status of a post, as set in the Administration Panel, Write Post SubPanel is either: Published
(viewable by everyone), Draft (incomplete post viewable by anyone with proper user level), or Private
(viewable only to WordPress users at Administrator level)
QuickTag
A Quicktag is a shortcut, or one‐click button, that inserts HTML code into your posts. The <b> (bold)
and </b> (stop bold) HTML tags are example of Quicktags. Some Quicktags, such as <!‐‐contactform‐‐>,
insert HTML comment code that is used by plugins to replace text or perform certain actions.
Relative Path
A relative path is the location of a file in relation to the current working directory and does not begin
with a slash (/). This is different than an absolute path which gives an exact location.
Relative URI
A relative URI (sometimes called a relative link) is a partial URI that is interpreted (resolved) relative to
a base URI.
On the World Wide Web, relative URIs come in two forms:
A relative URI with an absolute path is interpreted relative to the domain root:
/images/icecream.jpg → http://domain.example/images/icecream.jpg
A relative URI with a relative path is interpreted relative to the URL of the current document. E.g., on
the web page http://domain.example/icecream/chocolate.html,
strawberry.html → http://domain.example/icecream/strawberry.html
RSS
"Really Simple Syndication": a format for syndicating many types of content, including blog entries,
torrent files, video clips on news‐like sites; specifically frequently updated content on a Web site, and
is also known as a type of "feed" or "aggregator". An RSS feed can contain a summary of content or the
full text, and makes it easier for people to keep up to date with sites they like in an automated manner
(much like e‐mail).
The content of the feed can be read by using software called an RSS or Feed reader. Feed readers
display hyperlinks, and include other metadata (information about information) that helps you decide
whether they want to read more, follow a link, or move on.
Wikipedia's list of feed aggregators is fairly up‐to‐date and most are available for free.
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The original intent of RSS is to make information come to you (via the feed reader) instead of you
going out to look for it (via the Web).
Programs called news aggregators permit users to view many feeds at once, providing 'push' content
constantly. See Category:Feeds for Codex resources about bringing RSS feeds into WordPress. See also
RDF Site Summary.
Robots.txt
Web Robots are programs which traverse the Web automatically. They are also called Web
Wanderers, Web Crawlers, and Spiders. Search Engines are the main Web Robots. Some Web Robots
look for a file named robots.txt on your web server to see what and where they should look for
content and files on your web server. Some Web Robots ignore this file.
Sidebar
The sidebar, sometimes called the menu, is a narrow vertical column often jam‐packed with lots of
information about a website. Found on most WordPress sites, the sidebar is usually placed on the right
or left‐hand side of the web page, though in some cases, a site will feature two sidebars, one on each
side of the main content where your posts are found. A sidebar is also referred to as a Theme
Template file and is typically called sidebar.php.
Slug
A slug is a few words that describe a post or a page. Slugs are usually a URL friendly version of the post
title (which has been automatically generated by WordPress), but a slug can be anything you like. Slugs
are meant to be used with permalinks as they help describe what the content at the URL is.
Smileys
Smileys (also called Smilies or Emoticons) are stylized representations of a human face, usually
displayed as yellow buttons with two dots for the eyes, and a half mouth. Smileys are often used in
WordPress Plugins. By default, WordPress automatically converts text smileys to graphic images.
When you type ;‐) in your post you see when you preview or publish your post.
Spam
Once upon a time, SPAM was an animal by‐product that came in a can and was fodder for many Monty
Python sketches, but since the world‐wide adoption of the internet as an integral part of daily life,
Spam has become synonymous with what is wrong with the internet. Spam, in general terms, is an
email or other forms of unsolicited advertising. Spam is very easy to spread throughout the internet,
and works on the principle that if you send out thousands, or hundreds of thousands of unsolicited
advertisements, scams, or other questionable methods of making money, that you only need a very
small percentage of people to be fooled and you will make lots of money.
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Common spam these days comes from online gambling sites and those trying to sell drugs for "male
enhancement." Lately, web logs, or blogs, as we call them, have been targeted by spammers to try to
increase their site ratings in the search engines. Spammers use various methods to distribute their
electronic junk mail, and employ bots, or computer programs to quickly and easily send email or
comments to millions of addresses and IPs all over the world.
Spammers can be difficult to track down as they often hijack peoples' email and IP addresses. When
this happens, it may appear a friend sent you the spam, but in fact, the spammer's bot grabbed your
friend's email address and used it to hide the true source of the spam. WordPress developers and
community members are constantly working on more and better ways to combat these annoying
spammers as they clog the internet with their garbage. You can help by offering your talents, ideas,
suggestions, or just by being vigilant and installing any of the currently‐available spam combating
tools.
SSH
SSH stands for Secure Shell. It is a communication protocol for connecting to remote computers over
TCP/IP. Various authentication methods can be used which make SSH more secure than Telnet.
SSL
SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and is the predecessor to Transport Layer Security. These are
cryptographic protocols for secure communications across an unsecured network like the Internet. SSL
at Wikipedia
Tag
A tag is a keyword which describes all or part of a Post. Think of it like a Category, but smaller in scope.
A post may have several tags, many of which relate to it only peripherally. Like Categories, Tags are
usually linked to a page which shows all posts having the same tag. Unlike Categories, Tags can be
created on‐the‐fly, by simply typing them into the tag field.
Tags can also be displayed in "clouds" which show large numbers of Tags in various sizes, colors, etc.
This allows for a sort of total perspective on the blog, allowing people to see the sort of things your
blog is about most. Many people confuse Tags and Categories, but the difference is easy: Categories
generally don't change often, while your Tags usually change with every Post.
Tagline
A tagline is a catchy phrase that describes the character or the attributes of the blog in a brief, concise
manner. Think of it as the slogan, or catchline for a weblog.
Text editor
A text editor is a program which edits files in plain text format, as compared to binary format. Using a
non‐text based word processing program (e.g. using Microsoft Word to edit PHP scripts) can cause
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major problems in your code. This is because non‐text based word processing programs insert extra
formatting into text files, and can corrupt the files when they need to be interpreted by the
interpreter. An editor like Notepad does not insert any extra formatting.
Theme
A theme is a collection of files that work together to produce a graphical interface with an underlying
unifying design for a weblog. A theme modifies the way the weblog is displayed, without modifying the
underlying software. Essentially, the WordPress theme system is a way to skin your weblog.
Trackback
Trackback helps you to notify another author that you wrote something related to what he had written
on his blog, even if you don't have an explicit link to his article. This improves the chances of the other
author sitting up and noticing that you gave him credit for something, or that you improved upon
something he wrote, or something similar. With pingback and trackback, blogs are interconnected.
Think of them as the equivalents of acknowledgements and references at the end of an academic
paper, or a chapter in a textbook.
Unicode
For a computer to display letters (or any text characters), it needs to enumerate them ‐ create an index
of characters it knows how to display. These indexes are known as character sets. This is invaluable for
users hosting WordPress in a non‐English language.
The most widely used collections of these character sets are the iso‐8859 with iso‐8859‐1 and iso‐
8859‐15 (which contains the euro sign and some characters used in Dutch, French, Czech and Slovak)
being the most common; they are also known as Latin1 and Latin9. These character sets use 8 bits (a
single byte) for each character, allowing for 255 different characters (256, counting null). However,
when considering that Latin‐based languages aren't the only ones in the world (think Japanese or
Hebrew), 255 characters aren't nearly enough.
There is a wide index of characters known as Unicode. Unicode has so many characters that
sometimes more than 16 bits (2 bytes!) are required to represent them. Furthermore, the first 127
characters of Unicode are the same as the first 127 of the most widely used character set ‐ iso‐8859‐1.
For this purpose, UTF, the Unicode Translation Format, was created. UTF uses different numbers of
bits for characters, and allows for the entire range of Unicode to be used. What you should probably
know is:
• UTF‐8 is an 8‐bit‐minimum type of UTF. There are also UTF‐16 and UTF‐32.
• If your document is in a Latin‐based encoding, you probably don't need to change anything
about it for it to be UTF.
• A single UTF document can be in various languages with no need to switch encodings halfway
through.
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Web server
A web server is a computer containing software for, and connected to infrastructure for, hosting, or
serving, web sites written in HTML. The most common web server software on the internet is Apache,
which is frequently used in conjunction with PHP, Perl, and other scripting languages.
It is possible to create one's own web server, hosted on any speed of internet connection, but many
people choose to purchase packages from hosting providers, who have the capacity and facilities to
provide adequate bandwidth, uptime, hardware, and maintenance for frequently‐visited web sites.
XFN
The XHTML Friends Network. A decentralised project to have inter‐blog links that represent
relationships between bloggers. XFN links resemble <a href="http://www.photomatt.net/" rel="friend
met">Photo Matt</a>.
XHTML
XHTML, or Extensible HyperText Markup Language, is the successor to HTML as the W3C standard
language with which all web pages are created. It is often used in conjunction with CSS and JavaScript.
XML
XML, or Extensible Markup Language, is written in Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML)
and essentially allows you to define your own markup language. XML is extremely useful in describing,
sharing, and transmitting data across the Internet. Typically used in conjunction with HTML, XML
defines data and HTML displays that data.
XML‐RPC
XML‐RPC is Extensible Markup Language‐Remote Procedure Call. A Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
allows you to a call (or request) another application and expect that application to honor the request
(answer the call). So, XML‐RPC allows a user (or developer) to send a request, formatted in XML, to an
external application.

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About this Book .................................................................................................................................... 15

ABOUT WORDPRESS .................................................................................................................................................... 15

Chapter 1: Introduction to Blogging .................................................................................................... 16

WHAT IS A "BLOG"? ..................................................................................................................................................... 16

THE BLOG CONTENT .................................................................................................................................................. 16

COMMENTS .................................................................................................................................................................... 16

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A BLOG AND CMS?................................................................................................. 17

THINGS BLOGGERS NEED TO KNOW...................................................................................................................... 17

TRACKBACKS ................................................................................................................................................................. 19

PINGBACKS .................................................................................................................................................................... 19

VERIFYING PINGBACKS AND TRACKBACKS ........................................................................................................... 20

COMMENT MODERATION .......................................................................................................................................... 20

COMMENT SPAM ........................................................................................................................................................... 20

PRETTY PERMALINKS .................................................................................................................................................. 21

BLOG BY EMAIL ............................................................................................................................................................ 21

POST SLUGS ................................................................................................................................................................... 22

EXCERPT ........................................................................................................................................................................ 22

PLUGINS ......................................................................................................................................................................... 22

BASICS-A FEW BLOGGING TIPS ................................................................................................................................ 22

Chapter 2: WordPress Semantics ......................................................................................................... 23

INTRODUCTION TO WORDPRESS TERMINOLOGY ................................................................................................ 23

TERMINOLOGY RELATED TO CONTENT................................................................................................................. 23

TERMINOLOGY RELATED TO DESIGN .................................................................................................................... 24

TERMINOLOGY FOR THE ADMINISTRATOR ............................................................................................................ 25

THE TERMINOLOGY OF HELP ................................................................................................................................... 25

HISTORY OF THE WORDPRESS NAME ..................................................................................................................... 25

Chapter 3: Installing WordPress .......................................................................................................... 26

SYSTEM RECOMMENDATIONS ................................................................................................................................... 26

5-MINUTE INSTALL ...................................................................................................................................................... 26

Chapter 4: Getting Started .................................................................................................................... 28

OVERVIEW OF THE ADMINISTRATION PANEL....................................................................................................... 28

GENERAL STRUCTURE ................................................................................................................................................ 28

SHORTCUTS MENU ....................................................................................................................................................... 30

CUSTOMIZATION .......................................................................................................................................................... 31

DEFINING YOUR SETTINGS ....................................................................................................................................... 33

GENERAL SETTINGS .................................................................................................................................................... 33

WRITING SETTINGS ..................................................................................................................................................... 35

ADMINISTRATION DEFAULTS .................................................................................................................................... 36

NOTE .............................................................................................................................................................................. 37

REMOTE PUBLISHING ................................................................................................................................................. 37

POST VIA E-MAIL .......................................................................................................................................................... 37

PRESS THIS..................................................................................................................................................................... 38

UPDATE SERVICES ....................................................................................................................................................... 38

READING SETTINGS .................................................................................................................................................... 38

FRONT PAGE DISPLAYS ............................................................................................................................................... 39

BLOG PAGES SHOW AT MOST ..................................................................................................................................... 40

FOR EACH ARTICLE IN A FEED, SHOW...................................................................................................................... 40

ENCODING FOR PAGES AND FEEDS ......................................................................................................................... 40

DISCUSSION SETTINGS ................................................................................................................................................ 40

DEFAULT ARTICLE SETTING ...................................................................................................................................... 41

OTHER COMMENT SETTINGS ..................................................................................................................................... 41

E-MAIL ME WHENEVER ............................................................................................................................................... 42

BEFORE A COMMENT APPEARS .................................................................................................................................. 43

COMMENT MODERATION .......................................................................................................................................... 43

COMMENT BLACKLIST ................................................................................................................................................ 43

AVATARS ........................................................................................................................................................................ 44

AVATAR DISPLAY .......................................................................................................................................................... 44

MAXIMUM RATING ...................................................................................................................................................... 44

DEFAULT AVATAR ....................................................................................................................................................... 44

MEDIA SETTINGS ......................................................................................................................................................... 45

IMAGE SIZES .................................................................................................................................................................. 45

PRIVACY SETTINGS ...................................................................................................................................................... 46

PERMALINK SETTINGS ................................................................................................................................................ 46