WordPress Notes
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Agenda:
WordPress is a powerful personal publishing platform - freely distributed, standards compliant, fast, light and free with sensible default settings and features and extremely customizable core. (from wordpress.org)
- 300 to 500 people a day switch from Blogger to WP.
- hosted on your own server or wordpress.com
- there is a multi-user (wp-mu) version available for group blogging.
- Matt Mulleweg was listed by PC World as the 16th most important person on the web - ahead of Jerry and David, the founders of Yahoo! who are #19, ahead of Meg Whitman, the CEO of eBay, who is #28, and even the inventor of the internet, Al..errr .... Vinton Cerf, #35.
Source: 09/17/07 interview - http://bloginterviewer.com/featured-interviews/interview-with-wordpress-founder-matt-mullenweg
- Website: www.wordpress.org
- Download size: 960k
- Extensions: well over 700
- Requires PHP 4.2 > / MySQL 4.0 > (v. 2.1), Apache mod_rewrite module for permalinks
- Main Strength: incredibly popular blogging software
- Main Weakness: doesn’t extend too much past that (though for some it’s more than enough)
- SEO (Search Enging Optimization)
- Pings/Trackbacks/RSS
- A Trackback is an acknowledgment. This acknowledgment is sent via a network signal (ping) from the originating site to the receiving site. The receptor often publishes a link back to the originator indicating its worthiness. Trackback requires both sites to be Trackback enabled in order to establish this communication. Trackback does not require the originating site to be physically linked to the receiving site.
Trackbacks are used primarily to facilitate communication between blogs; if a blogger writes a new entry commenting on, or referring to, an entry found at another blog, and both blogging tools support the TrackBack protocol, then the commenting blogger can notify the other blog with a "TrackBack ping"; the receiving blog will typically display summaries of, and links to, all the commenting entries below the original entry. This allows for conversations spanning several blogs that readers can easily follow.
- Good user permission structure
- Any content type
- tons of plugins to make it happen for you.
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- Download latest WordPress code
- Create an empty MySql database on the web server
- Create the directory structure on the web server
- Unzip/untar files and upload to install directory
- Edit configuration script
- Point your browser to the setup script
- Follow prompts in browser window
- Users
- Update your profile - change password
- Options
- General
- Fill in the fields, change the time, change start of week to Sunday
- Decide if people can register and if they must be logged in to post a comment (you can change this anytime)
- Reading
- here is where you can tell WordPress what page to have as the front page.
- how many posts to show on the front page
- Discussion
- you can have an email sent whenever someone posts a comment (not good if you get a lot)
- leave the first 2 checked
- if a sensitive topic - you might want to check that a moderator must approve comments
- Privacy
- Whether or not google will see your blog
- Permalinks
- a good idea to change these as long as your Apache has mod_rewrite module installed (GCN does)
- you have several options - pick one and stick with it
- Miscellaneous - I usually leave it as is.
- Plugins
- copy the plugins you intend to use into the wp-content/plugins directory (unzipped)
- activate and configure
- Theme
- upload the theme you intend to use into the wp-content/theme directory
- go to Presentation, select and configure (if necessary)
- Manage
- Categories
- determine the categories you want to use (depending on final strategy - these become very important)
- sub-categories are now available in WP, and posts can belong to more than one category (this is great for having related content).
- Import
- You can now import from the following systems:
- Blogger - Import posts, comments, and users from a Blogger blog
- Blogware - Import posts from Blogware
- DotClear - Import categories, users, posts, comments, and links from a DotClear blog
- GreyMatter - Import users, posts, and comments from a Greymatter blog
- LiveJournal - Import posts from a LiveJournal XML export file
- Movable Type and TypePad - Import posts and comments from a Movable Type or Typepad blog
- Podcast RSS2 - podPress import of posts from a Podcast RSS2 feed.
- RSS - Import posts from an RSS feed
- Textpattern - Import categories, users, posts, comments, and links from a Textpattern blog
- WordPress - Import posts, comments, custom fields, pages, and categories from a WordPress export file
- Comments
- Delete the first comment (and the first post)
- Blogroll
- Delete the links that come standard - you can add yours at anytime (manually or by importing)
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- Akismet
- Automatic Kismet (Akismet for short) Wordpress Plugin is a collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue, so you never have to worry about spam again.
- Podpress
- The podPress pluggin gives you everything you need in one easy plugin to use WordPress for Podcasting.
- Home Page
- Flexible Upload
- Flexible Upload is a plugin for Wordpress 2.0.x and 2.1.x to enhance the image upload functionality. It resizes pictures to a specific dimension, creates custom-sized thumbnails, adds an optional watermark signature, and other options.
- Home Page
- Google Analytics
- The Google Analytics plugin for WordPress lets you easily add Google’s web tracking script to your WordPress powered site.
- Home Page
- Wordpress-phpMyAdmin
- This is a simple plugin that will allow you direct access to your WordPress database through phpMyAdmin within your WP admin console. No need to deal with phpMyAdmin setup and login and settings are taken from your WP settings.
- Home Page
- Search Pages
- This plugin lets your visitors search through posts and pages instead of only posts.
- Home Page
- WP-Print 2.11
- Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page.
- Home Page
- ShareThis
- This plugin, allow your visitors to share your post content via 45 social bookmarking websites and/or e-mailing the post to a friend. Post to a friend also support Import Contact from Gmail,Yahoo,AOL,Hotmail and MSN.
- Home Page
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- Using WP for a Portfolio Site
- To use WP to handle an online portfolio, it will have to be modified to make posts in WP hold individual projects (e.g. web designs, photography, art, etc.) you’ve worked on. This means that instead of the main page listing your daily ramblings in reverse chronological order, it should be able to list your projects in that order - but perhaps only with a thumbnail. Perhaps even custom fields will have to be utilized to make project administration more standardized.
- One example of using WP to do so is eric-powell.com.
- Using WP for an E-Commerce Site
- For e-commerce sites, not only will you have to make product pages that list thumbnails of your products, you would also have to integrate a payment solution (e.g. PayPal) into WordPress. Allowing your customers to dynamically change the ordering of your products in those pages, whether according to recency, price or rating, may also be necessary.
- An example of using WP for ecommerce is Filipino Artisans
- Using WP for a Photoblog
- Again, the concept of using WordPress for photoblogs is similar to using WP for galleries or portfolios. But there are unique customizations that will have to be applied for photoblogs, including automatic resizing of uploaded images and easy publishing of a photo’s exif data.
- Two examples of WP-powered photologs include Pictorialis and dilineate.
- Using WP for a News or Magazine Site
- News and magazine sites usually need to have feature articles kept on the front page, free of WP’s default reverse chronological display format. They might also need category pages (e.g. for sports news, international news, etc.) with the same implementation (i.e. feature articles specific to the category).
- Examples include XXL Magazine (removed link - the site has gotten pretty raunchy).
- Using WP for Article Libraries
- Article libraries generally need to manage and display articles in a hierarchical manner, yet must also be able to display those articles in reverse chronological order without hierarchy (i.e. Recent Articles). A plugin released in 2006 does exactly this.
- Two examples of this are A-Level.EconoRef and Alex King
- Using WP for Online Communities
- Communities with blogging, chat rooms, articles of impact, calendar etc... (not full-blown social networking)
- Truth Media is doing some great things here with WordPress - MenTodayOnline.com and ChristianWomenToday.com
- Writing Plugins for WordPress
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If you're creating a blog-centric website - then WordPress is an excellent choice. It's expandable, flexible and can handle any content. It is SEO compliant (as long as you do your part) and is easy to customize. Seems like a good deal to me!
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